Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Hastings Dunn, Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham

At face value, Donald Trump’s announcement about his plans on Russia and Ukraine look like a major policy change. Speaking from the Oval Office on July 14, where he had been meeting with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, the US president said he would send “top-of-the-line-weapons” to help Kyiv and – unless a ceasefire deal is agreed inside a 50-day time limit – the US would impose secondary sanctions on any countries dealing with Russia.

But while this represents a significant departure from Trump’s previous approach, it’s more of a step back towards the policy approach of his predecessor Joe Biden than the U-turn that some commentators are claiming.

For months Russia has stepped up its bombardment of Ukraine, buoyed by the fact that neither the US Congress nor the White House has authorised any new military aid to Kyiv. Moscow would have been aware of this lack of US action and its missile and drone attacks against Ukraine have aimed to run down the stocks of air defence missiles supplied by Biden while paying lip service to the idea of peace negotiations.

For Trump the penny appears finally to have dropped as to what was happening. His frustration and disappointment in Putin is what has finally led to him calling this out. According to Trump, Putin “fooled a lot of people – Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden – he didn’t fool me. At a certain point talk doesn’t talk, it’s got to be action”.

The decision to send new supplies of defensive – and potentially even longer-range offensive missiles – to Ukraine (even if the Europeans pay for them) is an important signal to Russia. But so too is the threat of tariffs of 100% on countries, such as India and China, that sustain the Russian economy by buying its oil and gas at knockdown prices.

The US senate, led by Lindsay Graham, the influential Republican senator for South Carolina, has been itching to pass these secondary sanctions for months. Now that the Trump administration appears to have adopted this plan it is a significant policy instrument to pile the pressure on Russia.

The change in Trump’s approach may also mean that the $US8 billion (£6 billion) of frozen Russian assets in the US (and US$223 billion in Europe) could be released to aid Ukraine, which would provide a ready means to pay for the US arms transfers.

Limits to US support

What has not changed, however, is the goal of Trump’s policy towards the war in Ukraine. While the Biden administration called out the illegality of Putin’s unprovoked aggression and called for the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty, Trump is merely calling for a ceasefire.

Trump may say he is “disappointed” with Putin, but he has not labelled him as the aggressor. In fact at one point he was blaming Ukraine for the invasion. And, significantly, he has not demanded that Russia give up the 20% of Ukraine that it currently illegally occupies.

The US president is also silent on what the US would commit to in terms of security and stability for Ukraine after the fighting stops. This is a much bigger question than Ukraine’s Nato membership. America’s European allies in Nato regard some sort of stability force on Ukrainian territory as necessary to deter any future Russian aggression.

Whether or not US troops would be involved (and all the signs are that they would not), some sort of US security “back-stop” or guarantee is still seen in Europe as key to its success – as would be US logistical and intelligence support for its operation.

But why the 50-day delay?

Another aspect of the change in Trump’s policy is the long lead time that Russia has been given to come to the table. A lot of Ukrainian civilians are likely to die during this period if the intense bombardment continues. On the battlefield, 50 days would give the Russians an extended window during a renewed summer offensive to make further territorial gains inside the occupied provinces.

So Trump’s proposals have to be viewed through the prism of his propensity to set deadlines that are then pushed back multiple times – as with the on-again, off-again tariffs, which have given Trump the nickname Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) on Wall Street.

Russian senator, Konstantin Kosachev, was certainly taking this view when he told the BBC after Trump’s announcement that, “if this is all Trump had to say about Ukraine today, then so far it’s been much ado about nothing”.

This sentiment was shared by the Russian stock market which rose 2.7% in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement. Analysts had expected much worse, so the long delay in the prospect of anything actually happening was clearly seen as a long way off and potentially subject to change or cancellation. Trump is seen by many as both inconsistent in his threats and unpredictable as to where policy will eventually settle.

The fact that Trump told BBC Washington correspondent Gary O’Donoghue that while he was “disappointed” with Putin, he was “not done with him” – and his clear reluctance to act quickly and decisively in sanctioning Russia – should be seen as an important counterpart to the apparent policy shift.

Like so many things with the 47th US president, it’s important not to react to the media appearances or the headlines they provoke, without also paying attention to the policy actions of his administration.

David Hastings Dunn has previously received funding from the ESRC, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Open Democracy Foundation and has previously been both a NATO and a Fulbright Fellow.

– ref. What Trump’s decision to send more weapons to Ukraine will mean for the war – https://theconversation.com/what-trumps-decision-to-send-more-weapons-to-ukraine-will-mean-for-the-war-261192

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gulshanara (Rumy) Begum, Senior Lecturer in Nutrition & Exercise Science, University of Westminster

Energy drinks are big business. Marketed as quick fixes for fatigue and performance dips, energy drinks are especially popular among young people, athletes, sports enthusiasts, and so-called “weekend warriors” – people who pack their workouts into the weekend instead of exercising regularly. Gamers are now a major target too.

But as the market grows, so do concerns about what’s actually in these drinks – and what these ingredients might be doing to our bodies.

Many energy drinks contain some combination of three familiar stimulants: caffeine, found naturally in coffee, tea and cacao; guarana, an Amazonian plant rich in caffeine; and taurine, a naturally occurring amino acid found in scallops, mussels, turkey and chicken.

Taurine, in particular, has drawn both hype and hope. It is credited with performance-enhancing properties and potential health benefits. But new research is raising important questions about how it behaves in the body – and when it might do more harm than good.

In May 2025, a study published in Nature sparked headlines and unease in equal measure. It found that taurine may fuel the progression of leukaemia, a group of blood cancers that begin in the bone marrow.

The study showed that while healthy bone marrow cells naturally produce taurine, leukaemia cells cannot. But they can absorb taurine from their surroundings and use it as a fuel source to grow and multiply. Research on mice and in human leukaemia cell samples demonstrated that taurine in the tumour microenvironment – the area around a tumour that includes blood vessels, immune cells and structural support – accelerated the progression of leukaemia.

Crucially, when researchers blocked taurine uptake by leukaemia cells (using genetic techniques), cancer progression slowed significantly. The authors suggest taurine supplements could potentially worsen outcomes in people with leukaemia and propose that developing targeted ways to block taurine uptake by cancer cells might offer a new treatment strategy.

Taurine: friend or foe?

Taurine is one of the most abundant free amino acids in the human body, found in especially high concentrations in the heart, muscles and brain. In healthy people, it’s mainly obtained through diet, but the body can also synthesise taurine from the amino acids methionine and cysteine, provided it has enough vitamin B6, which is found in foods such as salmon, tuna, chicken, bananas and milk.

Most people consuming a typical western diet take in 40mg–400mg of taurine a day from food alone. This figure refers only to taurine that is directly ingested, not including the additional amount the body can synthesise internally, which may vary depending on age, diet and health.

Taurine is listed on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) generally recognised as safe (GRAS) database, and according to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), it’s safe to consume up to six grams per day. By comparison, a serving of Red Bull or Monster contains around one gram – comfortably below that threshold.

Despite recent concerns about a possible link to blood cancer progression, taurine isn’t inherently harmful. In fact, some people may benefit from supplementation, especially those receiving long-term parenteral nutrition, where nutrients are delivered directly into the bloodstream because the gut isn’t working properly. People with chronic liver, kidney or heart failure may also have trouble producing or holding on to enough taurine, making supplementation helpful in specific clinical settings.

Ironically, some research suggests taurine may actually help reduce the side effects of chemotherapy in leukaemia patients – even as emerging studies raise concerns that it could also fuel the disease. This contradiction underscores how much context matters: the effects of taurine depend not just on dosage and delivery, but also on the patient’s underlying condition. What helps in one context, could harm in another.

But here’s the catch: taking taurine as a supplement for particular health reasons is very different from consuming large quantities through energy drinks, which often combine taurine with high levels of caffeine and sugar. This combination can put strain on the heart, interfere with sleep and increase the risk of side effects, particularly for people with underlying health conditions or those taking other stimulants.

The latest research raises important questions about whether taurine-heavy products could be harmful in some cases, especially for people with, or at risk of, blood cancers.

So, should you worry?

According to the current evidence, if you’re a healthy adult who occasionally sips an energy drink, there’s little cause for alarm. But moderation is key. Consuming multiple high-taurine drinks daily or taking taurine supplements (without prior professional consultation), on top of a taurine-rich diet might not be wise, especially if future research confirms links between taurine and cancer progression.

Until more is known, the safest approach would be to enjoy your energy boosts by consuming a nutritious diet rather than consuming energy drinks. If you have any underlying health conditions – or a family history of cancer – it’s always best to consult a healthcare professional before diving into taurine supplementation or consumption of energy drinks.

Gulshanara (Rumy) Begum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Taurine could power your energy drink – and maybe cancer cells too. Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/taurine-could-power-your-energy-drink-and-maybe-cancer-cells-too-heres-what-you-need-to-know-256957

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pavan Mano, Lecturer in Global Cultures, King’s College London

The Bank of England has announced a redesign of its banknotes and invited the public to suggest new themes that might feature on them. Victoria Cleland, the Bank of England’s chief cashier, said this was as “a symbolic representation of our collective national identity and an opportunity to celebrate the UK”.

Even though they can appear like the unifying symbols Cleland suggests, my research shows that there are contradictions that surround many national symbols. They are not as unifying as they might seem. In fact, in many cases they also work to exclude people.

For a long time, there has been a persuasive argument about belonging and the nation. As one of the grand theorists of the nation, Benedict Anderson, once put it, the nation is an “imagined political community”.

The idea here is that the nation is simply a collection of people who form a community together, something larger than themselves. And national symbols are supposed to represent this community. As such, national symbols are often taken as markers of belonging.

But what is often overlooked is the exclusionary element of the nation. In my book, Straight Nation, I show how for some people to belong to a nation, others must be portrayed as not belonging. It can be difficult to pinpoint exactly how one belongs to the nation; it is far easier to point at someone else and declare that they do not.

The invitation to contribute to the redesign will therefore show two things. It will tell us how the country sees itself. It will also demonstrate the contradictions around national symbols and the exclusions they can produce. The former perhaps more straightforward than the latter.

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How does England see itself?

In theory, the banknote is a perfectly neat national symbol. It is an object that is only valid within the borders of the state it is issued in, so the images printed on it can be treated as representations of the nation. Current notes feature images of historically significant characters: former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill, author Jane Austen, painter J.M.W. Turner and scientist Alan Turing.

Indeed, the Bank of England has suggested that images should not be “divisive”. In other words, they need to be as inclusive as possible. But in the current political environment, far-right politics and division have become extremely commonplace both globally and closer to home.

In the US, the current administration has squarely taken aim at diversity, equity and inclusion programmes and launched a massive wave of deportations. Across much of western Europe, far-right parties are going from strength to strength.

In the UK, rightwing Reform has emerged as the party that would win the most seats if a general election were held this year. The current prime minister, Keir Starmer, recently gave a speech where he warned the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.

Amid these political currents, it will be interesting to see which themes and images are eventually chosen to adorn the new banknotes from the consultation which closes at the end of July. The designs will be instructive not least because they will show how how the current climate translates onto these notes as well as how the country sees itself.

For instance, there has never been a person of colour and only three women have previously featured on a banknote. It would be a a long time coming if this were to change.

The exclusions at the heart of national symbols

Perhaps more importantly, however, is the ironic contradiction around asking for the public’s views on banknotes when banknotes are disappearing from public view.

At the start of this year, Lloyds Banking Group announced it would be closing 136 of its high street banks. This follows a broader trend. Since 2015, banks have closed more than 6,000 branches, and the number of cash machines has fallen by more than 7,000 between June 2021 and June 2024.

Banking is becoming increasingly digital and carried out through a smartphone app. A growing number of establishments have gone entirely cashless.

Many people are affected by this, including those with disabilities, older people, those living in rural areas and small businesses. Not only is cash no longer king, it is barely in the building.

When it is redesigned, the new banknote will be released into an environment where it is less used and, in a growing number of establishments that have gone entirely cashless, will be almost entirely unwelcome.

National belonging is often romanticised. There is a sense that nationalism and unity go hand in hand, and that the nation is simply a basin of belonging. National symbols are portrayed as a matter of pride.

We do not know yet what designs they will bear when the crisp new banknotes are issued. But we do know that they will be issued in decreasing quantities and many people will find it harder to get their hands on them. That captures the contradictions of national symbols, and the exclusions they produce.

Pavan Mano does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. England’s redesigned banknotes will reveal how the country sees itself – https://theconversation.com/englands-redesigned-banknotes-will-reveal-how-the-country-sees-itself-260842

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol

Summer is synonymous with adventure, with millions flocking to exotic destinations to experience different cultures, cuisines and landscapes. But what happens when the souvenir you bring back isn’t a fridge magnet or a tea towel, but a new illness?

International travel poses a risk of catching something more than a run-of-the-mill bug, so it’s important to be vigilant for the telltale symptoms. Here are the main ones to look out for while away and when you return.

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Fever

Fever is a common symptom to note after international travel – especially to tropical or subtropical regions. While a feature of many different illnesses, it can be the first sign of an infection – sometimes a serious one.

One of the most well-known travel-related illnesses linked to fever is malaria. Spread by mosquito bites in endemic regions, malaria is a protozoal infection that often begins with flu-like symptoms, such as headache and muscle aches, progressing to severe fever, sweating and shaking chills.

Other signs can include jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes), swollen lymph nodes, rashes and abdominal pain – though symptoms vary widely and can mimic many other illnesses.

Prompt medical attention is essential. Malaria is serious and can become life threatening. It’s also worth noting that symptoms may not appear until weeks or even months after returning home. In the UK, there are around 2,000 imported malaria cases each year.

Travellers to at-risk areas are strongly advised to take preventative measures. This includes mosquito-bite avoidance as well as prescribed antimalarial medications, such as Malarone and doxycycline. Although these drugs aren’t 100% effective, they significantly reduce the risk of infection.

Aside from malaria, other mosquito-borne diseases can cause fever. Dengue fever, a viral infection found in tropical and subtropical regions, leads to symptoms including high temperatures, intense headaches, body aches and rashes, which overlap with both malaria and other common viral illnesses.

Most people recover with rest, fluids and paracetamol, but in some instances, dengue can become severe and requires emergency hospital treatment. A vaccine is also available – but is only recommended for people who have had dengue before, as it provides good protection in this group.

Any fever after international travel should be taken seriously. Don’t brush it off as something you’ve just picked up on the plane – please see a doctor. A simple test could lead to early diagnosis and might save your life.

Diarrhoea

Few travel-related issues are as common – or as unwelcome – as diarrhoea. It’s estimated that up to six in ten travellers will experience at least one episode during or shortly after their trip. For some, it’s an unpleasant disruption mid-holiday; for others, symptoms emerge once they’re back home.

Traveller’s diarrhoea is typically caused by eating food or drinking water containing certain microbes (bacteria, viruses, parasites) or their toxins. Identifying the more serious culprits early is essential – especially when symptoms go beyond mild discomfort.

Warning signs to look out for include large volumes of watery diarrhoea, visible blood in the stool or explosive bowel movements. These may suggest a more serious infection, such as giardia, cholera or amoebic dysentery.

These conditions are more common in regions with poor sanitation and are especially prevalent in parts of the tropics.

Some infections may require targeted antibiotics or antiparasitic treatment. But regardless of the cause, the biggest immediate risk with any severe diarrhoea is dehydration from copious fluid loss. In serious cases, hospital admission for intravenous fluids may be necessary.

The key message for returning travellers: if diarrhoea is severe, persistent or accompanied by worrying symptoms, see a doctor. What starts as a nuisance could quickly escalate without the right care.

And if you have blood in your stool, make sure you seek medical advice.

Jaundice

If you’ve returned from a trip with a change in skin tone, it may not just be a suntan. A yellowish tint to the skin – or more noticeably, the whites of the eyes – could be a sign of jaundice, another finding that warrants medical attention.

Jaundice is not a disease itself, but a visible sign that something may be wrong with either the liver or blood. It results from a buildup of bilirubin, a yellow pigment that forms when red blood cells break down, and which is then processed by the liver.

Several travel-related illnesses can cause jaundice. Malaria is one culprit as is the mosquito-borne yellow fever. But another common cause is hepatitis – inflammation of the liver.

Viral hepatitis comes in several forms. Hepatitis A and E are spread via contaminated food or water – common in areas with poor sanitation. In contrast, hepatitis B and C are blood-borne, transmitted through intravenous drug use, contaminated medical equipment or unprotected sex.

Besides jaundice, hepatitis can cause a range of symptoms, including fever, nausea, fatigue, vomiting and abdominal discomfort. A diagnosis typically requires blood tests, both to confirm hepatitis and to rule out other causes. While many instances of hepatitis are viral, not all are, and treatment depends on the underlying cause.

As we’ve seen, a variety of unpleasant medical conditions can affect the unlucky traveller. But we’ve also seen that the associated symptoms are rather non-specific. Indeed, some can be caused by conditions that are short-lived and require only rest and recuperation to get over a rough few days. But the area between them is decidedly grey.

So plan your trip carefully, be wary of high-risk activities while abroad – such as taking drugs or having unprotected sex – and stay alert to symptoms that develop during or after travel. If you feel unwell, don’t ignore it. Seek medical attention promptly to identify the cause and begin appropriate treatment.

Dan Baumgardt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Just back from holiday and not feeling well? Here are the symptoms you should take seriously – https://theconversation.com/just-back-from-holiday-and-not-feeling-well-here-are-the-symptoms-you-should-take-seriously-260013

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Shelley Galpin, Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London

In my former life as a teacher, I once had a job interview in which I was asked how I dealt with the problem of teaching Jane Austen to boys.

Having had experience of this situation, I confidently told my interviewer (a maths teacher) that the “problem” they were assuming didn’t actually exist, and that it was perfectly possible to teach Austen’s novels to mixed-sex classes with successful results. My answer was met by barely veiled scepticism – and suffice to say, I didn’t get the job.

But where did this popular perception come from? Austen’s genius has been recognised from the earliest days of the development of a canon of English literature, and has never really fallen out of fashion. So it might seem odd that the suitability of her work for a co-educational class is the subject of genuine debate.

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This article is part of a series commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Despite having published only six books, she is one of the best-known authors in history. These articles explore the legacy and life of this incredible writer.

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The increasingly intertwined associations of Austen’s literature with the many (often excellent) adaptations of her work may not help the matter, with screen retellings often foregrounding the love stories and losing much of the ironic tone that characterises Austen’s narrative style.

The myriad repackaged editions of her novels that adorn bookshelves with pastel-toned floral designs, or images of anonymous portraits of passive young women, also do little to challenge the popular perception of these books as stories for women and girls.

Finally, and perhaps most troublingly, is the still-commonly held notion that stories with a female protagonist do not have wide-ranging appeal and must be consigned to a “niche interest” bracket. Male-led stories, in contrast, have long been considered to hold universal relevance for audiences.

This last point is a bigger issue concerning the publishing and entertainment industries, so I will largely park this one. But I will point out that, as others have argued in relation to Austen’s work, the classroom is an excellent place to start countering the assumptions of the “everyman” male experience, in contrast to the “special interest” attitude to female perspectives.

With regards to the teaching of Austen’s novels, drawing on my experiences both as a scholar and as a teacher, I believe her novels can speak to young readers of different genders and from diverse backgrounds.

Money, power and inequality

Addressing the ways in which Austen’s novels tend to be packaged, I asked my students, typically aged 16-18, to explore the ideas at the heart of the novels by redesigning the book covers to better reflect these themes.

The flowers and passive young women were gone. The redesigned book covers often focused on the idea of wealth, through pictures of differing piles of money, or power, such as the image of imbalanced scales to symbolise the unequal societies inhabited by Austen’s characters.

Because, as much as they are love stories, Austen’s heroines typically achieve their “happy endings” against a backdrop of money worries, power struggles, familial tension and gendered social hierarchies. While her novels are rightly celebrated for highlighting the unequal treatment of the sexes during her lifetime, it is reductive to see this as their sole contribution to social commentary.

Take Austen’s last completed novel, Persuasion. Here, Anne Elliot – over the hill at the ripe old age of 27 – begins the novel by rueing her broken engagement to Captain Wentworth, which she had been persuaded to break off eight years earlier due to his lack of fortune.

While the narrative focus is on Anne, who is left to regret her choice and wonder whether she will ever be able to escape her odious father and siblings, the broken-hearted Wentworth, who reappears in Anne’s life shortly after the start of the novel, is at least as much a victim of the situation as Anne herself.

At its heart, this is a story of a young woman who allowed herself to be persuaded to make a bad choice, and a young man who, through no fault of his own, was deemed not good enough due to his lack of wealth. The experiences of these characters, although they are older than the average school student, are highly relatable and sympathetic to many teenagers, who may well have experienced meddling family members or unfair judgments of their own.

Take also Northanger Abbey, in which fanciful Catherine Morland mixes fact and fiction and imagines the titular abbey to be a site of gothic intrigue, only to discover that the real horror derives from a controlling patriarch and his sexually predatory oldest son.

Here again, the novel cleverly makes the point that social inequalities, and the choices of those motivated by their love of money and power, are the real darkness at the heart of Austen’s society.

In my experience, students of all genders have been able to appreciate and relate to Northanger Abbey’s depictions of the loss of innocence, class inequality, and the experience of being subject to the sometimes obscure decisions of more powerful individuals.

Austen’s works, far from being the simple love stories of popular perception, are also razor-sharp satires of social and gendered inequalities. Full of witty observations and universally relatable experiences, there is a reason for the consistent popularity of her writing 250 years after her birth.

To fail to recognise this in the classroom is to do a disservice to all our students, as well as to Austen herself.

Shelley Galpin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why Jane Austen is definitely not just for girls – https://theconversation.com/why-jane-austen-is-definitely-not-just-for-girls-259193

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Long, Professor of International Relations, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

In 1867, the world’s most powerful statesmen, including Austria’s Emperor Franz Josef, France’s Napoleon III and US secretary of state, William H. Seward, petitioned the Mexican government to spare the life of a condemned man.

Mexico’s ragtag army and militias had just humbled France, then Europe’s preeminent land power. The costly six-year campaign drained the French treasury and eroded Napoleon III’s domestic support. Napoleon’s ambition to transform Mexico into a client empire under a Vienna-born, Habsburg archduke, crowned Maximilian I, ended in spectacular failure.

After his defeat, Maximilian was brought before a Mexican military tribunal. European monarchs regarded the prisoner as their peer, but Mexican liberals convicted him as a piratical invader, usurper and traitor. Despite indignant appeals from European courts, President Benito Juárez refused to commute his sentence. The would-be emperor was executed by firing squad.

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The controversy went beyond one monarch’s fate. It crystallised a clash between opposed visions of global order — as Peru’s president Ramón Castilla said at the time, it was a “war of the crowns against liberty caps”.

Today, world politics are in flux. The so-called liberal international order, nominally grounded in multilateralism, open markets, human rights and the rule of law, is facing its gravest crisis since the second world war. Former advocates such as the United States now openly flout international law and undermine the very norms they once championed. China remains ambivalent, while Russia unabashedly hastens the order’s unravelling.

More broadly, the old post-second world war order appears out of step with the global south and with widespread anger over double standards exposed by the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran.
Amid today’s crises, a world order arranged for and by the great powers looks both insufficient and doomed to lack legitimacy. Reordering will require support from diverse actors, including states across the global south.

1860s: a turbulent decade

The 1860s were a turbulent, although often overlooked, moment of global reordering. Technological shifts – the telegraph, electricity, steamships and railways – appeared as disruptive then as AI does today. Combined with shifting power dynamics, these transformations accelerated imperial expansion. Yet the rules of the emerging order remained uncertain, even among the imperial powers themselves.

In Europe, networks of dynastic rule still carried weight in international politics. Under growing pressure, the ancien régime sought to reinvent and reassert itself. The old empires often justified their expansion by promising to bring order and progress to supposedly backward peoples. But that “civilising mission” clashed with a worldview emerging from Spanish America – where countries had thrown off colonial rule to establish independent republics.

As we wrote in a recent article in American Political Science Review, Spanish American diplomats articulated a republican vision of international order centred on the protection of weaker states from domination by great powers.

Fending off Europe’s empires

Divided by civil conflict, Mexico became an easy target for European empires. Mexico’s Liberal party had regained power but faced internal dissent and crippling foreign debt. Britain, France and Spain formed a coalition to invade and demand repayment. France, however, had more ambitious designs.

Exploiting the distraction of the US civil war, Napoleon III dreamed of transforming Mexico into a Latin stronghold against Yankee expansion. Best of all, Napoleon thought the scheme would turn a profit. A stable Mexican empire could repay the costs of the intervention – with interest – by increasing production from the country’s famed silver mines. Meanwhile, France would gain a receptive market for its exports and a grateful geopolitical subordinate.

Maximilian, a young Austrian prince of the house of Hapsburg, somewhat naively accepted the offer to rule a distant and unfamiliar land. He dreamed of regenerating Mexico through a liberal monarchy while reviving his family’s declining dynasty.

Led by Juárez, Mexico’s liberals fiercely resisted Maximilian’s rule. While militarily Juárez was consistently on the defensive, he remained diplomatically proactive. The Juaristas encouraged US sympathies that proved decisive after the end of the civil war. They also enjoyed solidarity – though limited material support – from other Spanish American republics. Although the monarchies of Europe all recognised Maximilian as Mexican emperor, Juárez’s defiance became a rallying point for liberals and republicans in Europe.

Vision of a new order

Beyond stoking sympathies, Juárez and his followers offered trenchant critiques of unequal international rules and practices cloaked in liberal guise.

First, the “republican internationalism” of Mexico’s Juaristas stood in direct opposition to European liberals’ “civilising mission”. Latin American republicans rejected the notion that progress could be imposed on their countries from abroad – though some echoed civilising rhetoric toward their own non-white populations, who like in the US were subject to campaigns of violence and dispossession that stretched from northern Mexico to the Patagonia. Many Latin American liberals likewise remained silent about empire elsewhere.

Second, the Juarista vision placed popular sovereignty, not dynastic ties, at the heart of legitimate statehood. These ideas drew on Mexico’s independence tradition and the principles enshrined in the 1857 constitution. European intervention, in this view, aimed to suppress popular rule in the Americas and extend the reaction against the failed revolutions of 1848, which had seriously threatened the old order when they raged across Europe.

Third, popular sovereign states were equal under international law, regardless of power, wealth, or internal disorder. Sovereign equality also underpinned Latin America’s strong commitment to non-intervention. Liberal writer and diplomat Francisco Zarco, a close confidante of Juárez, condemned frequent European economic justifications for intervention as the work of “smugglers and profiteers who wrap themselves in the flags of powerful nations”.

Finally, Mexican liberals called for an international system premised on republican fraternity, drawing on aspirations for cooperation that went back to liberator Simón Bolívar. The independence leader and committed republican convened a conference in 1826, hoping that a confederation of the newly independent Spanish American states would “be the shield of our new destiny”.

Similar arguments for an international order that advances non-domination still resonate in the global south today. The Mexican experience also underscores that the architects of international order have never come exclusively from the global north – and those who shape its future will not either.

Tom Long receives support from UK Arts and Humanities Research Council grant AH/V006622/1, Latin America and the peripheral origins of the 19th-century international order.

Carsten-Andreas Schulz receives support from UK Arts and Humanities Research Council grant AH/V006622/1, Latin America and the peripheral origins of the 19th-century international order.

– ref. How 1860s Mexico offered an alternative vision for a liberal international order – https://theconversation.com/how-1860s-mexico-offered-an-alternative-vision-for-a-liberal-international-order-260228

Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Weber, Lecturer in Atmospheric Radiation, Composition and Climate, University of Reading

An estimated 4.2 million deaths can be attributed to poor air quality each year. Poor air quality is the largest fixable environmental public health risk in the world.

Our new study presents analysis of the UK-wide trends for three major pollutants – nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), ozone (O₃) and tiny particulate matter known as PM₂.₅ – between 2015 and 2024 to calculate how often air quality targets were breached.

Both nitrogen dioxide and PM₂.₅ showed robust decreases over the period 2015-2024, declining on average by 35% and 30% respectively. In 2015-2016, the average Defra monitoring site exceeded the nitrogen dioxide target on 136 days per year. By 2023-2024, this had dropped to 40 days per year.

For PM₂.₅, the number of days the average Defra site breached the target went from 40 to 22 days per year. While this is an improvement, the World Health Organization advises that these targets should not be breached on more than four days per year.

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To examine the sources of pollution, we studied how pollutants were influenced by factors including time of day, day of week, wind direction and origin, location of monitoring station and even interactions between pollutant. Nitrogen dioxide concentrations are highest at monitoring sites located next to busy urban roads, lower at urban background sites (which are located at sites further from traffic such as parks) and much lower in rural sites.

Profiles over 24-hour periods show strong nitrogen dioxide peaks coinciding with the morning and evening rush hours and clear decreases at weekends. This all points to local traffic emissions being the major source. While PM₂.₅ is also higher in urban than rural locations, it exhibits more muted rush hour peaks and is more consistent between the week and weekend, suggesting traffic plays a smaller role.

We explored how wind direction and origin influenced nitrogen dioxide and PM₂.₅ by running a weather forecast model backwards for three UK locations: Reading, Sheffield and Glasgow. While nitrogen dioxide showed only a weak correlation with wind origin, PM₂.₅ was much more dependent.

For example, the probability of PM₂.₅ breaching air quality targets on a given day exceeded 15% only when the air had come from continental Europe and, for Sheffield and Glasgow, passed over much of the UK too.

While nitrogen dioxide and PM₂.₅ showed clear improvements, ozone exhibited a less positive picture. Ozone increased in 115 of the 121 sites considered, growing by 17% on average. A similar trend was observed across much of northern Europe. The average number of days ozone exceeded the World Health Organization target doubled from seven to 14 per year.

This may seem modest at present, but several factors are conspiring to drive ozone higher. In much of the UK, the relatively high levels of nitrogen dioxide effectively suppress ozone: as a result, ozone is higher in rural rather than urban areas and, as nitrogen dioxide decreases, ozone will increase further.

Unless, that is, we also target nitrogen dioxide’s partner in crime, volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are critical to the production of ozone and are emitted from human sources such as traffic and industry, plus certain types of vegetation like oak trees. While emissions of nitrogen dioxide fell by 20% between 2015-2024, human-driven VOC emissions declined by only 1%.

Ozone also increases in periods of hot weather due to elevated VOC emissions from vegetation and greater mixing of air from higher up in the atmosphere into the layer closest to the surface. Incidents of hot weather are only going to become more frequent in the UK, making it even more critical to crack down on human-driven VOC emissions to limit ozone pollution.

Up in the air

In the UK, considerable efforts have been made to improve air quality. Its importance has been enshrined in law for nearly 70 years. An extensive network of air quality monitoring sites is maintained by the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) plus devolved and local authorities.

Local authorities are required to monitor air quality and develop air quality management areas in places where targets are unlikely to be met. Clean air or low emission zones have been introduced as a result.

However, air quality policy must be designed to reflect the complex nature of each pollutants’ drivers. Nitrogen dioxide is dominated by local sources, PM₂.₅ by transport from further afield and ozone by a combination of both.

Local and national policies that cut traffic emissions by incentivising the replacement of older cars with newer, cleaner vehicles, retrofitting buses and restricting entry of the most polluting vehicles into towns and cities will probably reduce nitrogen dioxide further.

But, if nitrogen dioxide decreases are not accompanied by reductions to VOC emissions, locally and internationally, ozone will continue to rise, especially with more frequent hot weather.

By contrast, most PM₂.₅ comes from sources further afield, including industry and agriculture from other parts of the UK and beyond, so reductions hinge on stronger national and global policies that target emissions at source rather than just local efforts.

Air pollution doesn’t respect borders and while the technologies to facilitate continued improvements exist, they must be deployed in joined-up, international efforts.

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James Weber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. UK air quality is improving but pollution targets are still being breached – new study – https://theconversation.com/uk-air-quality-is-improving-but-pollution-targets-are-still-being-breached-new-study-260961

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephan Blum, Research associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen

Beneath the epic tales of heroes and gods, Troy’s true story is written in something far less glamorous – its rubbish.

When we think of Troy, we imagine epic battles, valiant deeds, cunning tricks and the wrath of gods. Thanks to Homer’s Iliad, the city is remembered as a stage for romance and heroism.

But long before Paris stole Helen and Achilles raged on the battlefield, the people of bronze age Troy lived ordinary lives – with extraordinary consequences. They built, cooked, stored, traded and, crucially, threw things away. And they did it right where they lived.

Today, waste is whisked away quickly – out of sight, out of mind. But in bronze age Troy (3000–1000BC), trash stayed close, often accumulating in domestic dumping grounds for generations.

Having spent more than 16 summers excavating and analysing the bronze age layers of Troy, I’ve learned to read the city’s history this waste.

Hundreds of thousands of animal bones from cattle, sheep, fish – even turtles – were found alongside vast quantities of pottery shards, ash, food scraps, and human waste. Sometimes, these layers were reused to level floors or build walls, showing how closely intertwined daily life and refuse management were.

Archaeology’s dirty secret

This wasn’t laziness or neglect, it was pure pragmatism. In a world without rubbish trucks or sanitation systems, managing refuse was neither chaotic nor careless, but a collective, spatially negotiated – and surprisingly strategic – effort.

The excavations I have worked on as part of the University of Tübingen’s Troy Project, which has been going on since 1988, have revealed just how deliberate these routines were. Where people chose to dump, or not to dump, speaks volumes about status, social roles, and community boundaries. Waste is the diary no one meant to write, yet it records the intimate rhythms of daily life with unfiltered clarity.

Far from a nuisance, Troy’s waste is an archaeologist’s treasure trove.

Over nearly 2,000 years, Troy ended up with 15 meters of built-up debris. Archaeologists can see nine major building phases in it, each made up of hundreds of thin layers, which formed as people lived their everyday lives. These layers act like snapshots, quietly recording how the city changed over time. Some capture hearth cleanings, others record the rebuilding of entire city quarters.

By analysing the layers and their ratios of bones to pottery, ash concentration, presence of storage jars, grinding stones, or production debris, specific spaces of activity become visible: kitchens, workshops, storage areas, rubbish pits. What appears chaotic turns out to be a carefully structured map of everyday routines – showing where meals were prepared, tools made, and discarded objects left behind.

The story these remains tell is one of profound transformation. Troy began as a modest agrarian settlement, shaped by the steady rhythms of farming, herding, and small-scale craft. Over time, it grew into a thriving regional centre.

The archaeological record, rich in refuse, traces this long arc of change. Exotic imports fashioned from stones such as carnelian and lapis lazuli begin to appear, revealing distant trade connections. Specialised metalworking tools emerge alongside monumental architecture. some buildings stretched nearly 30 metres, signalling growing ambitions and expanding capabilities.

This rise unfolded gradually, reflected not just in grander buildings, but in shifting tools, trade, and how people dealt with what they left behind. Waste management became more organised, with designated areas for different types of waste. This reflects broader shifts in how the community structured space and managed its economy.

Yet this ascent was interrupted. By the mid-third millennium BC, signs that things were becoming smaller appear. Architecture simplifies, household inventories shrink, production debris declines suggesting economic slowdown or political instability.

Still, Troy endured. By the mid-second millennium BC, the city revived. Refined ceramics, luxury imports and evidence of social complexity marked a new chapter of recovery and reinvention. This splendid settlement later became the stage for Homer’s Trojan War where Greek warriors faced the daunting task of climbing towering mounds of debris built up over centuries just to reach the palaces.

A heap worth climbing

These insights allow us to see Troy not just as a city of walls and towers, but as a living organism shaped by daily routines, unspoken norms and social negotiation. The waste left behind is a remarkably honest archive of bronze age society – beneath myths, stones, and poetry.

Troy’s trash heaps are the bronze age’s search history. To know what mattered 4,500 years ago, don’t ask poets – ask the garbage. From broken tools to shared meals, from imported luxuries to scraps, this waste reveals the pulse of everyday life and society’s evolving structure.

Ironically, these mundane refuse layers preserved the bronze age world for us. Without them, we’d know far less about early Troy’s people. Their depth and composition trace changes in economy, technology, and social structure. From scraps to towers of pottery shards, waste archaeology is key to understanding early urban complexity.

So next time you picture Achilles storming Troy’s gates, remember: the heroes might have been divine, but their city smelled very human.

Stephan Blum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. We can learn a lot from Troy’s trash – https://theconversation.com/we-can-learn-a-lot-from-troys-trash-260613

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pinar Dinc, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science and Researcher, Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University

The historic disarmament ceremony on July 11 where members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) laid down their arms marked a pivotal moment in a decades-long conflict in Turkey. The ceremony was described by many who attended as a profoundly symbolic and emotional day that may signal the beginning of a new era.

During the disarmament ceremony in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, 26 PKK guerrillas alongside four senior commanders and leaders of the movement, symbolically laid aid down their arms and burned them. The audience included officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), plus politicians, journalists and international observers.

For more than four decades the PKK has been embroiled in an armed conflict with Turkey that has claimed more than 40,000 lives and shaped Kurdish identity and politics across the region.

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The PKK disarmament ceremony also could mark a new era for the Kurds, one of the largest stateless groups in the world with over 30 million people living across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The PKK has said it will now shift from armed resistance to political dialogue and regional cooperation.

Strikingly, the day after the ceremony, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan acknowledged the state’s historical failures in addressing the Kurdish issue. He listed past abuses of Kurds – state-sponsored abductions and extrajudicial violence, the burning of villages and the forced displacement of families – as examples of policies that had fuelled, rather than quelled, the conflict.

“We all paid the price for these mistakes” he said. He later added: “As of yesterday, Turkey began to close a long, painful and tear-filled chapter.” Erdoğan also announced the formation of a parliamentary commission to oversee the legal steps of the peace process, suggesting a much-needed institutionalised and transparent approach than in previous attempts.

This hints that the road ahead might include a period of transitional justice. This could compose of different tools used by societies to address past violence and human rights abuses during a shift from conflict to peace and democracy. These may include legal actions such as trials, as well as other efforts to heal and rebuild trust in society.

Erdoğan also underlined the regional dimension of the agreement: “The issue is not only that of our Kurdish citizens, but also of our Kurdish brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria. We are discussing this process with them, and they are very pleased as well.”

International dimensions

While the PKK may be laying down arms, the Kurdish political movement should not be expected to disappear. On the contrary, it is likely to become more active in the democratic sphere — both in Turkey and in other parts of the Middle East where Kurdish people live. It is no secret that the current peace process is the result of shifting geopolitical realities.

Growing tensions between the US and Iran, Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, the ousting of the Assad regime in Syria, and shifting power dynamics across the region have all contributed to a geopolitical landscape in which prolonged armed conflict has become increasingly unsustainable — for both Turkey and the PKK. In this context, the current peace process is not merely a domestic initiative.

It represents a strategic recalibration in a rapidly changing Middle East. For Turkey, stabilising its southeastern border and reducing internal security pressures is essential amid regional volatility.

Turkey has long maintained strong ties with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) (the official ruling body of the Kurdistan region) in Iraq. However, the situation for Kurds in Syria remains more complex, as Turkey continues to view the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (a region that has in effect been self governing since 2012 and where many Kurds live) as a security threat along its border.

Meanwhile, negotiations continue between the new Syrian government under current president, Ahmed Hussein al-Shara, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led coalition in Syria, which has been historically backed by the US. The SDF seeks to maintain its military autonomy and have its own independent political system — both of which are opposed by Damascus.

Western nations, particularly the US, remain influential in these talks. The US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, is reportedly uneasy with the lack of progress in the talks between al-Shara, and the SDF. He said: “The SDF, who has been a valued partner for America in the fight against ISIS, well-respected, bright, articulate, has to come to the conclusion that there’s one country, there’s one nation, there’s one people, and there’s one army.”

Another factor here is that a strong Arab-Turkish-Kurdish alliance is unlikely to align with Israeli strategic interests, which may favour a more fragmented Kurdish presence in the region.

For now, Turkey faces the complex task of overseeing a comprehensive disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process. This requires not only the decommissioning of weapons and the disbanding of armed units, but also the social and political reintegration of former combatants. The success of this will depend on legal reforms, institutional trust and a genuine commitment to democratic inclusion.

Erdoğan has been critised for his government’s ongoing non-democratic practices such the appointment of state trustees who replace elected officials and the imprisonment of elected officials.

And, despite the symbolic disarmament, the Turkish government persists in using the words “struggle against terrorism” — an approach that risks undermining the peace process by criminalising political dialogue and delegitimising Kurdish demands.

Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan reiterated that the PKK’s broader network, including the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), a group representing Kurds across Iraq, Syria and Turkey, must cease to pose a threat. “We will remain vigilant until every component of the KCK is no longer a danger to our nation and region,” he stated.

For the PKK, the changing alliances and uncertainties in Syria and Iraq may have made armed struggle a less viable path forward. Yet the sustainability of peace will depend on more than disarmament. It will require ending the criminalisation of Kurds in political institutions and within civil society.

What comes next will determine whether this moment becomes a historic turning point or another missed opportunity.

Pinar Dinc is the principal investigator of the ECO-Syria project, which receives funding from the Strategic Research Area: The Middle East in the Contemporary World (MECW) at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden.

– ref. How does the PKK’s disarmament affect Turkey, Syria and Iraq? – https://theconversation.com/how-does-the-pkks-disarmament-affect-turkey-syria-and-iraq-261113

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dale Pankhurst, PhD candidate and Tutor in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast

The British government announced in early July that a far-right group called the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) will be banned under terrorism legislation. This will make it a criminal offence in the UK to be a member of the group or to express support for it.

The RIM was at the centre of a string of letter bomb attacks targeting high-profile people and institutions in Spain in 2022. These included a bomb addressed to the official residence of Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, which was intercepted by his security detail.

Six more letter bombs were mailed to targets including the American and Ukrainian embassies in Madrid, military installations, and weapons manufacturing companies that supply arms to Ukraine. No one was killed in the attacks, which US officials considered to be acts of terrorism.

Investigators soon announced that they suspected the RIM of being involved. US and European officials alleged that the group was directed to carry out the attacks by Russian intelligence officers.

What is the RIM?

The RIM is an ultra-nationalist, neo-nazi and white supremacist organisation based in Russia. It was created in 2002 by Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, a Russian national who is designated a terrorist by the US government.

The group seeks to create a new Russian empire, and uses the Russian imperial flag as its sign. The previous Russian empire (1721-1917) encompassed all of modern-day Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Georgia, Armenia and the Baltic states, as well as parts of China.

The movement does not recognise Ukrainian sovereignty. It sees Ukraine as part of what it calls a global Zionist conspiracy designed to undermine Russia and promote Jewish interests. The RIM has engaged in Holocaust denial and is formally outlawed in the US, Canada and now the UK.

It also has a paramilitary wing called the Imperial Legions, which operates at least two training facilities in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. The US State Department believes these facilities are being used to train RIM members in woodland and urban assault, tactical weapons and hand-to-hand combat.

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Denis Valliullovich Gariyev, the Imperial Legions’ leader, has in the past called on “young orthodox men” to join the Legions and defend Novorossiya – a term used to describe Russia’s claim over Ukraine. As of 2020, the Imperial Legions was estimated to have several thousand members.

The RIM and its paramilitary wing have engaged in a wide range of activities and operations. These range from passive alliances with other far-right groups in Europe to providing paramilitary training for terrorist organisations. They have also participated directly in bomb attacks.

Since 2014, when the conflict in eastern Ukraine began, the movement has trained and sent members as mercenaries to bolster the pro-Russian separatist groups fighting there. Its members have also actively supported the Russian armed forces in Ukraine after the full-scale invasion in 2022.

After the invasion, posts related to the RIM on various social media platforms such as Vkontakte and Telegram revealed a ramping up of recruitment to join operations in Ukraine. Its fighters have posted videos of themselves in Ukraine armed with weaponry from sniper rifles to anti-tank missiles.

According to analysts, the movement also maintains strong ties with the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group. Imperial Legions fighters are believed to have operated alongside Wagner mercenaries in Syria, Libya and possibly the Central African Republic.

Outside of these activities, the movement has been active in supporting far-right organisations in Europe. These include the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden and similar groups in Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

It provides training to these groups through its so-called “Partizan” (Russian for guerrilla) programme. The training includes bombmaking, marksmanship, medical and survival skills, military topography and other tactics. According to the UK government, the Partizan programme aims to increase the capacity of attendees to conduct terrorist attacks.

Two Swedish nationals who took part in the programme later committed a series of bombings against refugee centres in Gothenburg, a city on Sweden’s west coast, in late 2016 and early 2017. The men were convicted in Sweden, with the prosecutor crediting RIM for their terrorist radicalisation and training.

The RIM has also provided specific paramilitary training to far-right groups in Finland. Some members of these groups have fought on Russia’s side in Ukraine, while others have attempted to establish a Finnish cell of the international neo-nazi Atomwaffen Division. Police raids in 2023 also unveiled plans to assassinate the then Finnish prime minister, Sanna Marin.

Links with the Russian state

The movement has previously been critical of the Russian government. It initially believed the approach of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, to Ukraine was too soft, while the group’s promotion of white supremacy and neo-nazism is at odds with Putin’s pragmatic nationalism within Russia.

In 2012, the RIM even took part in discussions with other far-right groups in Russia to form an opposition movement called New Force to challenge Putin’s rule. However, the crisis in Ukraine that erupted in 2014 after pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power has caused the Kremlin and RIM’s political objectives to converge.

Indeed, the group can now be viewed as one of the core Russian proxy paramilitaries operating in Ukraine at a time when Putin needs more recruits to continue the war. Western intelligence agencies now believe it has a relationship with officials from Russian state intelligence.

It is difficult to pinpoint the total number of RIM fighters operating in Ukraine as the involvement of mercenary groups there is a closely guarded secret. However, based on previous intelligence reports on the group’s activities, it is reasonable to assume the number is in the hundreds to low thousands.

The decision by the British government to proscribe the RIM indicates concern that the far-right group is increasing its operational capacity both in Ukraine and throughout Europe. With its extensive network, the movement will become an increasing threat to security if it is allowed to continue acting as a proxy for Putin’s foreign policy objectives.

Dale Pankhurst does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Russian Imperial Movement: how a far-right group outlawed by the UK is spreading terror across Europe – https://theconversation.com/russian-imperial-movement-how-a-far-right-group-outlawed-by-the-uk-is-spreading-terror-across-europe-260825