In a speech on February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised the independence of the separatist republics of Lugansk and Donetsk. At the same time, he also called into question the very existence of Ukraine as an independent and sovereign state. So what is his goal? Given the recent recognition of the Patriarchate of Kiev by the ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew I, is Putin also defending a religious cause, on behalf of the Moscow Patriarchate? The Daily Compass asked Marta Carletti Dell'Asta, researcher at the Christian Russia Foundation in Italy and editor-in-chief of the magazine La Nuova Europa.

In times of tension it is always said that "if you want peace, prepare for war". But it’s not the way; experience shows that those who prepare for war never achieve peace, at most a truce. We must change our attitude and prepare for peace instead. And for Christians, the model is the one explained by Metropolitan Antonij of Suroz.

The EU Court of Justice has rejected the appeal presented by Hungary and Poland. The two Central European countries had asked for the cancellation of the regulation that allows the EU to suspend payments from the European budget to member states where "the rule of law is threatened". It is a further step towards a European super-state.

Despite the Biden administration, 17 American intelligence agencies and the Pentagon consistently raising the alarm, since last December, about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, the prospect that Vladimir Putin will really order a takeover of the former Soviet republic is remote if not political fiction.

Although it is not the largest, so far it’s the most conspicuous and loudest of the protests against compulsory vaccination: it is the Freedom Convoy, the travelling protest of Canadian (and supportive US) truck drivers that peacefully invaded Canada and then "besieged" Ottawa, the capital, last weekend. The protest has already been imitated abroad, first of all in Holland and France.

The election of Roberta Metsola from Malta as the new president of the European Parliament, by a healthy majority of the votes cast, is not good news. Yesterday, those who cheered her anti-abortionism were soon forced to change their minds after hearing what she had to say about "reproductive health" and "nationalism". And then there is her commitment to LGBTI rights.

Archbishop Matthew Hassan Kukah criticises the ongoing violence in Nigeria and President Buhari’s silence on the matter. He condemns the plague of kidnappings with the disappearance of hundreds of boys and girls. Also Fr Luke Adeleke died in such an attack.

After the invasion in 1974, "Turkey’s ethnic cleansing in northern Cyprus resulted in the displacement of some 200,000 Greek Cypriots". Women and children were raped, detained and killed. More than 500 churches and monasteries were looted or destroyed and toponyms changed to Turkish, for a "cultural genocide" aimed at erasing the Greek-Christian identity of Cyprus. The Daily Compass interviewed Uzay Bulut a Turkish journalist.

The direct confrontation between Biden and Putin failed to lower tensions on the Ukrainian "front": Russia wants to keep NATO at a distance; the US is trying to create a division between Russia and Europe, starting with the boycott of the Russian-German gas pipeline Nordstream 2.

In Gibraltar everyone is vaccinated but the curve of contagions is increasing and the government is launching new social restrictions. Gibraltar is the extreme case that shows the dead-end towards which all countries that have not adopted a realistic and proportionate approach to the issue are heading.

In the same year that two dissident journalists were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of freedom of expression, an independent Chinese journalist, Christian, Zhang Zhan, risks to die in prison. She, like all the other ‘citizen reporters’, had tried to document the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan. They have been either been arrested or have gone missing.

Éric Zemmour, a journalist and essayist of Algerian Jewish origin, could really become the new reference point for French Catholics if he runs in the next presidential election. Macron is the first 'post-Christian' president who considered the national religion of France as one of many cults. While the France of the institutions and the media has slipped to the left, the people are becoming increasingly conservative Catholic. Zemmour, though not a Christian, is well aware that without the Church France would be lost.