IVP604 - May 2025

Ukrainian workers make up the bulk of frontline soldiers defending the country against Russia’s war of aggression, but that hasn’t stopped Volodymyr Zelensky’s government from attacking trade union rights.

The country of Georgia, a small nation of 3.8 million people in the Caucasus, has been thrown into a profound crisis. Its people have risen up against the ruling party, Georgian Dream, over the passage of its Russia-style “foreign influence law,” homophobic anti-LGBTQ propaganda law, rigging of the recent election, and suspension of accession talks for membership in the EU.

The conclave of cardinals has for the first time elected a pope from the USA, a man who has been critical of the policies of President Donald Trump and Vice-president J.D. Vance. What will the choice of this American to be head of the Catholic Church mean for the US?

On the morning of 7 May, when I answered my doorbell and went outside looking for who rang, my neighbor loudly asked me to turn off all my lights. This command signaled to me that we are living in a moment of war.

The minerals deal signed between Ukraine and the United States reflects US capital’s desire to gain unhindered access to Ukraine’s mineral resources. It also gives the US new leverage over Ukraine’s economic and political situation. In contrast, there are no obvious benefits for Ukraine, despite it ceding sovereignty.

Israel has accustomed us to fishing in troubled waters. The Zionist state has long been interested in sowing discord and fanning its flames in striving to redraw the map of the Middle East in its image, so that the logic of sectarian and ethnic fragmentation prevails over the logic of citizenship and shared loyalty to a state that merges sectarian and ethnic groups into a single melting pot while preserving their rights. Inspired by the Roman Empire’s famous principle of “divide and conquer”, Israel has sought, since its inception, to exploit the differences it found in its immediate and distant surroundings, playing sectarian minorities against the regional Sunni majority and ethnic minorities against the Arab majority: Druze, Christians, Kurds, and others – even Shiites during the time of the Shah of Iran, before that country became a hotbed of anti-Israel hostility and contributed in turn to fuelling Shiite sectarianism in neighbouring Arab countries in an effort to expand its regional influence.

The option of peace between the DRC and Rwanda is now becoming plausible, albeit fraught with obstacles. However, this is proving disadvantageous for Kinshasa.

The implications of climate-unjust politics are ever more important to interpret and resist. United States President Donald Trump, an unabashed ‘climate denialist’, withdrew his country, the main historic emitter of greenhouse gases, from United Nations negotiations, and should now be sanctioned. But annual UN COPs (Conferences of the Parties) won’t, because the ‘climate action’ approach is dominated by the West and BRICS. They continue to deny the world long-overdue ‘climate justice’ and they won’t punish Trump’s climate crimes.

The centre cannot hold! In the wake of Reform’s massive gains in local elections, Dave Kellaway investigates the new political landscape.

Once France had been defeated after the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu (1954), the great powers imposed the Geneva Accords, which were highly unfavourable to the Vietminh, temporarily dividing the country into two military regrouping zones.