Egypt’s strongman president faces election amid economic slump and popular anger over inaction on Gaza: The bitter conflict between Israel and Hamas could not have come at a worse time for Egypt. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former military strongman who seized power in 2013 amid the turbulent fallout of the Arab Spring, faces a general …
Ukraine war: Crimean bridge attack is another blow to Putin’s strongman image: The bridge connecting mainland Russia across the Kerch strait with the illegally annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was seriously damaged on July 17 2023, in what appears to be a successful strike by naval drones. While there has been no official confirmation from …
Book on Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe’s legacy has many flaws: Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe died in 2019. EFE-EPA/Yeshiel Panchia Development studies professor David Moore’s new book, Mugabe’s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe, attempts to understand the legacy of Robert Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2017, when he …
Putin’s Russia: how the ex-KGB strongman has gradually turned the clock back to Soviet repression: Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova faces up to ten years in prison after interrupting a broadcast on popular state-owned Russian TV network Channel One with a sign reading: “NO WAR. Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They are lying to you …
The story of Milo Pillay, the strongman who lifted a bar for South African sports: Milo Pillay (The Sun newspaper 1951). National Library of South Africa A vast international body of literature exists on sports under apartheid. Yet there’s hardly any scholarship on South African black weightlifting history from earlier periods, which were also marked …
Belarus election: why strongman Alexander Lukashenko faces unprecedented resistance: Alexander Lukashenko, the longest-serving leader in the former Soviet Union, will seek re-election as president of Belarus on August 9 for the sixth time since 1994. But amid the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians have attended rallies to show their support for Lukashenko’s opponents …
COP24 shows global warming treaties can survive the era of the anti-climate ‘strongman’: New leaders have emerged over the past few years who have changed the highest levels of political and diplomatic discourse. After divisive elections, both the US and Brazil are among the countries to have succumbed to the “strongman”. The modern strongman is …