Ministers from European Union countries decided last week to work strategically to counter Russian’s propaganda offensive in Ukraine and other former Soviet states. EU countries intend to collaborate on broadcasting to give citizens in the target countries, e.g. the Baltics, an alternative to the relentless bombardment of Russian media, which produces a highly distorted version of the news aimed at Russian speakers.

A report on EU-Russia relations by a UK House of Lords committee admits that the EU totally miscalculated Moscow’s reaction to the developments in Ukraine because of a lack of Russian experts, says Lord Peter Truscott. Britain's House of Lords has been debating a report suggesting relations between the EU and Russia have reached a critical level. 

What is striking about today’s Russo-Ukrainian War is the extent to which the great powers — the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom — have sided with Ukraine.

Last June, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a far-reaching administrative ruling that offered marital benefits for the first time to all of the United Nations’ lesbian and gay employees, as well as to other U.N. workers who had entered legally recognized domestic partnerships. On Monday, March 2, Russia gave the plan a resounding nyet.

Last week, a report from a committee of the House of Lords offered a brutal judgement on British and European policy toward Russia. Europe went “sleep-walking” into the crisis in Ukraine, said the report, and Western countries had lost the “robust analytical capability” to understand Russia. The truth about UK policy toward Russia, however, is much worse.

Germany is emerging, faster than it wanted, as a global diplomatic force. (...) Its new engagement is evident in the awe-inspiring stamina of Mrs Merkel’s diplomacy. In one recent week, she shuttled between Berlin, Kiev, Munich, Washington, Ottawa, Minsk and Brussels on consecutive days. In Minsk, as the picture shows, she negotiated through the night for more than 17 hours with four complicated men (the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and France).

Ukrainian military and separatist representatives exchanged dozens of prisoners under cover of darkness at a remote frontline location Saturday evening, kicking off a process intended to usher in peace to the conflict-ridden east. 139 Ukrainian troops and 52 rebels were exchanged, according to a separatist official overseeing the prisoner swap at a no man's land location near the village of Zholobok, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the rebel-held city Luhansk.