Eurotopics.net

On 17 November 1989, demonstrations at Prague University and Wenceslas Square marked the beginning of the virtually non-violent end of the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia: the Velvet Revolution. Thirty-five years on, how do things stand with the ideals that so many fought for back then?

Donald Trump's latest cabinet appointments are likely the most controversial: he has picked anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary and Matt Gaetz, who supports the conspiracy theory that Trump's 2020 election was stolen, as attorney general. Tulsi Gabbard, who accuses the Biden administration of disregarding Russia's "legitimate security interests" in Ukraine, is to head the intelligence services. Commentators assess the risks.

The figurehead of the French right is facing five years in prison and a ban from politics. The public prosecutor's office has accused Marine Le Pen and other party leaders of the former Front National of using EU funds to employ staff who worked directly in France on party affairs between 2004 and 2016 - which constitutes embezzlement of EU funds. A litmus test for the polarised French public.

After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine agreed to the withdrawal of Soviet nuclear weapons when it signed the Budapest Memorandum. In return, it received security guarantees that now prove worthless. According to reports in the British newspaper The Times, an investigation commissioned by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence has come to the conclusion that Ukraine could develop nuclear bombs within months. The press is divided.

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, and opposition politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, who were released from Russian custody in a prisoner exchange at the beginning of August, have organised a rally against the Russian regime and the war in Ukraine for this Sunday in Berlin. Commentators living in exile explain why demonstrations by anti-Putinists outside Russia are important.