The last time I saw Igor Girkin
Steve Rosenberg is the BBC’s Russia Editor and I have been following his work for as long as I can remember.
This week he’s written about the difference between the last time he saw Igor Girkin before seeing him again this week in a Moscow court.
Igor Girkin is one of the Russians responsible for shooting down Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine. But Girkin’s court appearane this week was not because of his role in murdering the 298 souls on-board that Malaysia Airlines flight but the result of Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on ultra-extremist patriots.
Rosenberg’s piece charts Girkin’s rise from FSB officer to commanding pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine to founder of the nationalist The Club of Angry Patriots.
The Girkins of the world believe that Putin is not waging his war in Ukraine hard enough.
Girkin’s arrest came after he called Putin a ‘non-entity’ and ‘cowardly waste of space.’
His arrest and conviction this week shows that the Kremlin’s critics are not just those who desire a freer Russia but also those who want to unleash more brutality and force than we are already seeing against Ukraine and others.
Trump’s New Hampshire win shows his weakness
Donald Trump seems on course to completely crush his opponents in his quest for the Republican nomination. The last person standing in his path is Nikki Haley who lost the Iowa caucuses and this week’s primary in New Hampshire.
Once Trump demolishes her candidacy there is a growing assumption (based on polling) that he could then go on to defeat Joe Biden in the November election.
But maybe not.
The New Hampshire result exposed some key weaknesses for Trump with the largest-ever gap recorded between independent voters and Republicans.
Trump likely secures the nomination, given he has largely reshaped the GOP in his own mould, but in the end he will need to win over America and not just the cultish MAGA crowd.
This piece even explores the possibility that Trump could cost the Republicans control of the House.
More protests in Germany, this time against the far-right
Last week What I’m Reading featured a story on the farmers’ protests in Germany.
In recent days, there have been more and new protests, but this time against the far-right and specifically the astronomical rise of the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party.
More than 100,000 people protested in Berlin alone, and around 1 million nationally but the AfD is doubling down.
With it’s polling at a high of around 22 per cent, AfD leader Alice Weild wants to campaign for Germany to follow Britain’s decision in quitting the European Union.
This is a good explainer of the mass deporation proposal that triggered the protests.
NB. This Euractiv piece argues that the left, has been slow to work out how to harness the so-called ‘silent majority’ protests consisting of politically centrist voters, ahead of the European elections in June.
Macron subs in for Biden in India visit
French President Emmanuel Macron is having a good visit to India. France is boosting its weapons sales to India, which is dependent on Russia for its arms.
But Macron wasn’t Narendra Modi’s first choice for guest-of-honour at this year’s Republic Day celebrations. That was US President Joe Biden.
Biden, citing his shedule, was too busy.
Fair, he has the aforementioned election to win but the Biden Administration and Europe generally has been overtly embracing India as a hedge against China, often ignoring the legitimate requests of the human rights community to raise Modi’s crackdowns on free speech, the press and religious minorities.
So Biden’s snub can only be seen in the context of the extraordinary US indictment that was unsealed last year exposing an alleged plot connected to the Indian government to carry out assassinations of Sikh separatists across North America.
This was first revealed by Canada’s Justin Trudeau who accused the Indian government of being behind the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil.
So why Macron if not Biden?
As this piece by the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs notes: ‘France offers the Indian government an obvious advantage: unlike the US administration, President Macron carefully refrains from any public criticism or comment on the issue of human rights or the treatment of religious minorities in India.’
ABBA Voyage: Emotional escapism
This week I went to see ABBA Voyage.
I appreciate how late I am to this bandwagon, however, I did have tickets to see this last year which were interrupted by the death of the monarch…
Anyway, this was phenomenal. ABBA Voyage brings the Swedish band to life with holograms and it might sound crazy to go to a concert to watch pictures but this was truly gobsmackingly brilliant.
The rendering of the holograms was mindblowing, you could see the hairs on their arms, pockmarks and scars on their skin as well as their veins and their sequinned and velvet costumes moved with exquisite fludity. At no point did I feel that I was not looking at a real person.
The 3000-person capacity theatre in East London was custom built and it showed.
Lighting and animations — particularly the animated Lord-of-the-Rings-esque short film set to Eagle — were a huge part of the show while ABBA were doing ‘costume changes’ and they were equally exquisite.
I was transfixed. I felt like I had stepped into the future and that science fiction had become reality. It was 90 minutes of emotion-led escapism.
If is the future of concerts I am totally on-board. The ability to recreate our departed greats, Elvis, Queen, Sinatra for example are endless.
But the costs may be prohibitive. As of September, ABBA Voyage had not turned a profit despite being sold-out since its opening in May 2022.
‘The audacity of how much this show costs – it was all a bit mad,’ producer Svana Gisla told Variety.
This means while it’s unlikely to go on tour anytime soon it is a reason to come to London!
That’s my list for this week. Please do send me anything that’s caught your eye. And if you like my posts, please do consider subscribing and sharing with others who you think might also enjoy this content in their life.
I have no idea about the economics of any kind of stage production, but ...
There are plans to mount ABBA Voyage in Australia - https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/the-winner-takes-it-all-sydney-melbourne-in-rival-talks-to-host-abba-s-voyage-hologram-concert-20230707-p5dmkf.html
Based on the article, it looks like the promotors are / were trying to get a bidding war between Melbourne and Sydney.