On Tuesday, April 9, Chinese State Official Wang Yi hosted his Russian counterpart Minister Sergey Lavrov in Beijing for talks on economic and security cooperation. The new cooperative measures are set to displace American influence in Asia and Europe, the United States’ most strategically important region and former most strategically important region, according to political scientist and professor John Mearsheimer.

The regime in Russia further cracked down on its queer community this month, with Russia’s top court ruling to ban the so-called “international LGBTQ movement,” labeling it an extremist organization. It is now illegal in Russia to “promote or praise LGBTQ relationships, publicly express non-heterosexual orientations or suggest that they are normal.”

The European Union (EU) has threatened legal action against the Polish government for failing to resolve the blockade at the border between Poland and Ukraine — caused by a weeks-long trucker protest.

Around 250 blue Stars of David were tagged on buildings in France, in what the Parisian police chief called an “antisemitic” incident. Officials in France claim that a Russian-speaking person living abroad “may have paid for” the graffiti and Russian-controlled social media accounts promoted images of the graffiti.

On Nov. 7, a report from the U.S. Department of State (DOS) announced the discovery of a significant Russian disinformation apparatus operating in Latin America. The disinformation campaign is allegedly being conducted by The Social Design Agency (SDA), an informational entity that the European Union called “a Russian IT company closely linked to Russian political power.”

In a recent interview with The Economist, top Ukrainian General Valery Zaluzhny admitted that the war against Russia has reached a stalemate — comparing the situation in Eastern Ukraine to Northern France during World War I.