In the wake of the Russian-Ukrainian war disguised as an internal conflict in Donbass, the surge of ethnic minority political parties in the Baltic States calls for attention. That Russia has repeatedly launched a massive media and psychological attack against the Baltic States obvious to anyone not devoid of the sense of reality. (Tęsti...)

The extreme power of manipulation, in terms of public opinion and imagology, and its political and moral implications are well revealed by one film that has contributed to the critique of today’s controlling political structures. This is Barry Levinson’s film Wag the Dog. The film tells us the story of Hollywood producer Stanley Motss and Washington’s spin doctor Conrad Brean, who are supposed to save the White House due to the President’s scandalous romance. (Tęsti...)

In 2013, I have written conjointly a book with Zygmunt Bauman, one of the greatest thinkers of our times. It is a book of an intense philosophical dialogue on the loss of sensitivity. The title of our book, Moral Blindness, was Bauman’s idea, and it came out as an allusion to the metaphor of blindness masterfully developed in the Portuguese writer José Saramago’s novel Ensaio sobre a cegueira (Essay on Blindness). Yet the subtitle of the book, The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity, came out from my own theoretical vocabulary, albeit with Bauman’s touch – his books would be unthinkable without the adjective “liquid,” be it liquid modernity or liquid fear or liquid love. Much to my delight, this book will have a second life in the Ukrainian language and culture. (Tęsti...)

Sitting in downtown Wrocław and raising a glass of wine, my friend, cultural attaché of Lithuania in Poland, and I both found ourselves absorbed by an exciting chat about Polish football. All of a sudden, a sharp historical association crossed my mind. Exactly forty years ago, in 1974, the then seemingly unbeatable Brazil was defeated twice – first by Holland and then by Poland. 1974 was not the time of Brazil. It signified the arrival of a different epoch. (Continue...)  (Tęsti...)

14 July 2009 appears to have been an historic date that indicated two hundred and twenty years from the beginning of the French Revolution. One would have expected a celebration of the date trying to embrace the new reality of Europe, first and foremost, its unique and historically unprecedented solidarity. (Tęsti...)

Pewnego wieczoru, siedząc przy kieliszku wina na wrocławskim Rynku, dyskutowałem z moją przyjaciółką, attaché ds. kultury ambasady litewskiej w Polsce, o polskiej piłce. Rozmawialiśmy, a jakże, w kontekście brazylijskiego mundialu. Nagle dotarło do mnie, że oto równo przed 40 laty rzekomo niepokonana Brazylia przegrała dwa razy - najpierw z Holandią, a potem z Polską. (Tęsti...)

“We are coming,” says Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), and co-chair of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group in the European Parliament. As if to say that this is just his time, Farage comes up with the punch line directed straight to Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament: “Please don’t pretend that nothing has happened. You know perfectly well that it has. And the day is nigh when all your EU institutions will be plain dead. (Tęsti...)

Checking out Russian television this spring, especially after switching from BBC News or French TV, I found it difficult to avoid a sense of déjà vu. Every tidbit of information about Ukraine reminded me of the events that followed January 13, 1991, when troops from the Soviet Union killed 13 peaceful civilians in Vilnius, Lithuania. (Tęsti...)

The title of this writing is a paraphrase of the title of a famous novel. As we know, The Winter of Our Discontent is the title of John Steinbeck’s last novel, published in 1961. The title is a reference to the first two lines of William Shakespeare’s Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.” (Tęsti...)

In his book of correspondence with the noted French writer Michel Houellebecq, Public Enemies, the French journalist, activist and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy wrote on present Russia: “Not only does this Russia inspire no desire in me, it fills me with horror. I’d go so far as to say that it frightens me because I see in it a possible destiny for the late-capitalist societies. Once upon a time, during your postwar ‘glory days,’ the middle class was terrorized by being told that Brezhnev’s communism was not an archaism restricted to distant societies but rather a picture of our own future. We were wrong: it was not communism but postcommunism, Putinism, that may be the testing ground for our future.” (Tęsti...)

The Russian language may have failed as an imperial project of becoming a lingua franca in Eastern Europe, but many brilliant minds of the region are inextricably linked to the language. Today, Russian is increasingly seen as a tool of political domination over the former republics of the Soviet Union. (Tęsti...)

Over the past days and weeks, on a quick look at Russian TV channels (I have one even in my hotel at Strasbourg not to relax from the disturbing complexities of our life in the EU and in the vicinity – especially after comparison of Russian TV with BBC News or French TV) it was difficult to get rid of a déjà vu feeling. Every piece of information about Ukraine there is strikingly and frighteningly similar to what I had long been listening immediately after 13 January 1991 when the Soviet troops killed fourteen peaceful civilians in Vilnius. (Tęsti...)

Jokes are not terribly kind to the Russian language and its political reputation. One of them, for instance, deals with anticipations of the emergence of a new global lingua franca as the outcome of the rise of the economic and political power of a respective nation. (Tęsti...)

This is exactly what comes to my mind trying to assess EU policies vis-à-vis Ukraine and Viktor Yanukovych. What happened in Ukraine? That’s obvious: Ukraine and the EuroMaidan are hardly anything less than a Deus ex machina manifestation of pro-European passion and faith. This is more than a timely emergence of such a sentiment, as the EU expects and fears – and rightly so – the European Parliament to be elected in May 2014 that is highly likely to be richly represented by far Right and Euroskeptics. (Tęsti...)

I believe that there is no reason to insist on the crucial importance of journalism for politics. We can hardly expect a miracle of sound and reasonable politics to happen where the decline of analytic and investigative journalism takes place. The political class has ceased being the outcome of education and upbringing nowadays; instead, the logic of mass democracy and mass education imposes on us the unquestionable primacy of the swiftly shaped public opinion which no public figure can escape. (Tęsti...)

What happened to Ukraine? Nothing that might have come as a shock. Russia applied a classical strategy, yet we would hardly know whether the sticks dominated over the carrots, or the other way around. To put it simply, this would be the question as to whether the Kremlin promised to ruin Ukraine’s economy – provided the Verkhovna Rada should have decided to pass all the necessary pieces of legislation needed to send a message to the EU and to Germany in particular that Ukraine qualified for the club the Vilnius Summit would be much of a formality, or whether it pledged its old allegiances to Viktor Yanukovych reassuring him that he remains the only choice of Russia’s political elite or, to be more precise, of its power structure - the siloviki or law enforcers. (Tęsti...)

Ukraine will remain a friend to a democratic Russia in the future. Now, Ukraine and Russia are bound to bid farewell to one another. (Tęsti...)

The third Eastern Partnership Summit will take place on November 28-29 in Vilnius. It can change the political landscape of Europe dramatically. If we succeed in signing the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine, the Vilnius Summit will have crucial political, and even civilizational, implications for decades to come. (Tęsti...)

Visiems mums yra tekę pasvajoti apie galią girdėti svetimas mintis. Mes tokį gebėjimą vaikystėje paprastai siejame su galia, kurią galima panaudoti blogio demaskavimui išoriškai kuo nekalčiausiai atrodančiuose žmonėse. Iš tikrųjų, kaip ir svajonė apie nemirtingumą, fantazija apie žinojimą visko, ką mąsto ir jaučia kiti žmonės, atrodo gėris ir palaima tik vaikystėje. (Tęsti...)

It was more than once that I felt astonished by and ashamed of some of my colleagues’ choices for the Sakharov Prize, the supreme award of the European Parliament for human rights defenders and activists. (Tęsti...)