Eurotopics.net

32 mercenaries from the Russian private military company known as the Wagner Group have been arrested at a sanatorium outside Minsk. According to the authorities, they were on a mission to destabilise the country ahead of the Belarusian presidential election on 9 August. Is the Kremlin really trying to interfere, or is this all just a ruse by the country's embattled leader Alexander Lukashenko?

The bosses of the four US internet giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon testified on Wednesday before a committee of the US House of Representatives. They were questioned about the abuse of their market power. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg stressed that their size alone does not make these companies bad. But that's not the point, commentators argue.

With Covid-19 cases again rising in many countries, fresh criticisms of Europe's management of the pandemic are also being voiced. Politicians have eased the measures taken to counter the virus at all levels over the last two months, making international tourism, and in some states even large dance events, possible once more. Commentators fear this could now backfire.

Zbigniew Ziobro, the Polish minister of justice and founder of the PiS spin-off Solidarna Polska, wants his country to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention. Among other things, the Convention obliges signatory states to classify any form of violence against women and girls and all forms of domestic violence as a crime. Commentators discuss why the Convention is suddenly under scrutiny, and not just in Poland.