Frida Ghitis
It was a carefully choreographed show of force in Beijing Thursday as Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived for yet another meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. They were all smiles.
Meanwhile in Europe, the atmosphere could have hardly felt less jovial.
On Wednesday, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot multiple times and gravely wounded in an assassination attempt. Fico is reportedly out of danger now, with many details about the shooting still unclear. But the dramatic event added to the foreboding sense of crisis across the region; the feeling that, as tense as the situation is, it’s time to prepare urgently, because it might turn much worse.
In the 10 days since Putin was sworn in for yet another term — his fifth as Russia’s president — his forces launched a surprise attack on northeastern Ukraine, drawing close to the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, and capturing several Ukrainian villages.
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