👀🌐 Global Eyes

🐢🐈🐠 What's happening around the world. With extra animals.

🇪🇺 Europe

You have no idea how bad Europe’s energy crisis is.¹

The biggest problem is spiking natural gas prices, which have been wreaking havoc across the continent, turbocharging inflation, hamstringing industries, and making ordinary people shudder when they get their power bills in the mail. European natural gas prices are now around ten times higher than they were on average over the last decade and about ten times pricier than in the United States. Alex Munton, an expert on global gas markets at Rapidan Energy Group, a consultancy, said European natural gas is so expensive it’s like paying US$500 for a barrel of oil. And these are the good months. …

The gas problem is largely due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has disrupted exports of Russian gas to Europe and raised prices everywhere else. But it’s not just the war: Alternative supplies of gas are expensive, climate change has drained rivers so much that many of Europe’s nuclear plants are offline, and there’s been more than a decade of confusion among European policymakers about how to build shock absorbers into the system. Power prices in both Germany and France reached record levels this week (again), a reflection of the continent’s ever-deepening power emergency. As nations buckle under the economic pressures, desperate times have called for desperate measures: Britain announced a painful 80 percent spike in the cap for household energy costs while Germany increased bills by almost 500 euros. 

Understatement of the century: “The retirement of additional nuclear plants in the middle of the worst energy crisis Europe has seen in a very long time seems misguided.”

🇽🇰 Kosovo asks for more NATO peacekeepers:

There is an urgent need for further NATO troops in Kosovo due to “threats from Serbia and Russia,” the prime minister said. There have been weeks of heightened tensions between Prishtina and Belgrade after the Kosovo government announced it would introduce reciprocity measures affecting Serbian citizens, involving entry documents and licence plates.

🇲🇪 Government digital infrastructure in Montenegro has been hit by an “unprecedented” cyber attack:

Outgoing Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic called a session of the National Security Council for Friday evening to discuss the attack. Abazovic said it was politically motivated following the fall of his government last week.

Hackers also attacked Montenegro’s state digital infrastructure on election day in 2016, and then again over a span of several months in 2017 when the former Yugoslav republic was about to join NATO. The Western military alliance is aware of reports of cyber attacks in Montenegro and ready to help its authorities if necessary, said an unidentified NATO official.

🇬🇷 Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is seeking to deflect heated attacks in parliament over a spiraling phone-tapping scandal by accusing unidentified foreign entities of trying to destabilize the country amid an energy crisis and increased threats from Turkey.

Tadeusz Giczan @TadeuszGiczan

No one was expecting current Hungary to be an advocate of Ukraine, but these figures are just insane. Only 3% of Viktor Orban's Fidesz party supporters believe that Russia started the war in Ukraine. 12% believe that Ukraine is to blame, and 49% think it's the USA.

Andrzej Sadecki @ASadecki

To jednak dość porażające. Na pytanie o to, kto odpowiada za wybuch wojny rosyjsko-ukraińskiej wśród wyborców Fideszu zaledwie 3% odpowiada, że Rosja, 12%, że Ukraina i aż 49%, że USA (!!!). A 32% nie wie. https://t.co/fnQScuFoTV

🇫🇷 Storm brews in Eric Zemmour’s far-right party after crushing defeats. Plagued by internal criticism, shunned by its members and competing with the RN, the far-right Reconquête! party is facing turbulence. “It's the raft of the Medusa, they’re eating each other.”

🇬🇧🇫🇷 Hopes of an Anglo-French reset dashed as Macron and Truss insult each other:

[Liz Truss] set the tone during an explosive leadership campaign event Thursday night, vowing to judge French President Emmanuel Macron by his “deeds not words,” and warning “the jury is out” on whether he is Britain’s “friend or foe.” …

Alex Taylor @AlexTaylorNews

Here's exactly what Macron just said replying to the Truss "friend or foe" comment (my Eng subtitles 👇) (although I think his silence and look when asked the question says it all 😀👇)

• Shitstorm: French kick up a stink over UK sewage dumped in the English Channel.

⚡️Europe’s soaring energy bills are triggering a wave of shutdowns at major fertilizer plants across the Continent, havoc for farmers and food manufacturers.

🇩🇪🛢 “We were all wrong.” Germany has been forced to admit it was a terrible mistake to become so dependent on Russian oil and gas. So why did it happen?

“For thirty years, Germans lectured Ukrainians about fascism,” the historian Timothy Snyder wrote recently. “When fascism actually arrived, Germans funded it, and Ukrainians died fighting it.”

🇵🇹🦕The remains of what could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe have been uncovered in someone’s garden in Portugal.

---

Russia

The short life and infamous career of Darya Dugina: