Eurotopics.net

Now that the Taliban have seized power in Afghanistan, the balance of power in Central Asia has shifted. Commentators focus on China and Russia, which, aside from Pakistan, are the only countries keeping their embassies open in Kabul. But how much responsibility Moscow and Beijing are really assuming, and what advantages this will bring them is debatable.

Last week marked the 30th anniversary of the August Coup in the Soviet Union. Back then, members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for whom the economic restructuring initiated by glasnost and perestroika went too far tried to seize power and overthrow President Gorbachev. The coup failed when the population and armed forces refused to follow the putschists' lead, and it heralded the end of the crisis-ridden Soviet Union.

Poland is reinforcing the EU's eastern border with barbed wire and fences to prevent the entry of immigrants coming from Belarus. Brussels has accused Lukashenka of deliberately sending migrants on to put pressure on the EU in retaliation for the sanctions it has imposed. Poland's population and press voice concern that fleeing Afghans and Iraqis are now trapped in the no-man's land between the two countries.

Madrid and Rabat have officially settled their diplomatic crisis. Morocco agreed to the repatriation of the immigrants that it had allowed to flee across its border to Ceuta and in exchange Spain's Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya resigned after taking responsibility for triggering the crisis by allowing a leader of the liberation movement in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara to be treated in a Spanish hospital.

At a conference on the future of Crimea, representatives of about 50 countries have once again condemned Russia's annexation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for clear support for the "de-occupation" of the peninsula. A Kremlin spokesman criticised the summit as an "anti-Russian event". Commentators shed light on the international power matrix.