In 2018, the 100th anniversary of the great theatre and film director and writer Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) is celebrated around the world. He created about 60 documentary and feature films and 170 theatre productions, won multiple awards, including Oscar and Cesar awards, and prizes at the Cannes, Berlin, Venice and many other international film festivals.

The Mediterranean serves as a platform for Rome’s geopolitical efforts in the region which are aimed at creating a powerful configuration of strength that would leave the three main vectors of Italy’s foreign policy – the southern (directed at North Africa), the western (directed at the Atlantic) and the eastern (directed at the Balkans) – open and easy of access.

To cultivate peaceful progress in the world, let us make this Russian word МИР popular in positive meanings in various countries. Let us collect artwork, photographs, collages, artifacts, etc. that promote МИР.

Even before the ink on the comments made by those who (just like the author of these lines) saw the recent meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires as a sign of a temporary truce in the trade war between the two countries had time to dry, something like a hostage-taking and the opening of a second front happened. The recent arrest in Canada under US pressure of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of China’s telecommunications giant Huawei, is unfolding into a full-blown international scandal with far-reaching consequences.

Moscow has hosted the presentation of a joint report by the Russian non-governmental organizations “The Legacy of the Second World War in the Baltic States: How to Restore Justice for Victims of Nazi Crimes”. The aim of this document was to analyze the actions of the Baltic authorities in relation to Nazi collaborators and their victims in terms of the current international law, as well as to prepare recommendations to improve the current situation.

Ukraine’s recent provocation in the Black Sea has become another pretext for unraveling the Yalta system of international institutions and legal accords, which has been actively and openly done since 2014. Before that, it was Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, a bungled attempt to do the same in Syria, as well as a series of "color revolutions," orchestrated in close vicinity of the Russian borders, including the so-called “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine.

Following the latest events in and around the Black Sea, two old questions are reappearing. Both are inviting us for a repeated elaboration: If a Monroe doctrine (about the hemispheric security exclusivity) is recognised at one corner of the globe, do we have a moral right or legal ground to negate it at the other corner? This irrespectively from the fact that Gorbachev-Yeltsin Russia unilaterally renounced the similar explication – the Brezhnev doctrine about irreversibility of communist gains. 

The Syrian conflict was high on the agenda of a conference on the problems of the Middle East and Africa, which was recently held at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow. The participants pointed to the external aspect as the main factor in the conflict, with Boris Dolgov, a senior researcher at the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies, describing the Syrian crisis as a result of the US model of globalization.

The US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), seriously hampered the chances for keeping the landmark accord in place. The accord, signed in 2015 by the P5+1 group of countries — China, Germany, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — with Iran, requires Tehran to maintain a peaceful nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. According to the IAEA, Iran strictly abides by the terms of the JCPOA, while the international community is unable to do the same, no matter how much politicians in the EU and other countries would like to stick to its provisions - all because of US pressure.

On November 25, leaders of the EU member states approved an agreement on the withdrawal of Great Britain from the Union. The last objections, voiced by Spain, were lifted after Madrid received "assurances from the British government concerning Gibraltar." Now the British Prime Minister Theresa May will have to secure the approval of the country's parliament.