After giving a speech from the symbolic Arc de Triomf in Barcelona and then evading a police dragnet, Carles Puigdemont has made it back to Belgium. ‘Today I’m in Waterloo after a few extremely difficult days,’ he posted on X.

As both sides of the island mark the war that began on 20 July 1974, it is in the knowledge that almost nothing has changed.

GP, celebrity chef and astrologer among defendants in third trial linked to far-right Reichsbürger

5 takeaways from the surprise election results in Catalonia, where the separatist dream suffered a setback.

A multitude of looks at the Kurds at a chronically urgent film festival: the Amsterdam Kurdish Film Festival, from 10-12 May in the Netherlands.

More and more people are asking Ukraine to drop its defense and sit at the negotiation table with Russia. What exactly a deal would involve is largely left unsaid. But it would clearly involve freezing the conflict, resigning Ukraine’s occupied territory to Russia in exchange for an end to the fighting.

The war against Ukraine did not start in February 2022, but in the spring of 2014. And the root of the invasions goes back in time even more, as they were a delayed response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and earlier territorial claims. The online exhibition Borderlands - Ukraine in Historical Maps - with numerous maps and short commentaries, aims to shed some light on the historical backgrounds of the present war of Russia against Ukraine. It was curated by historian Harrie Teunissen and map curator Martijn Storms.

Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, a small rock in northern Africa conquered by Spain in 1564, holds the title for the world’s smallest national border, measuring just 85 meters in length.

Politicians in Moldova’s Kremlin-backed breakaway region of Transnistria have appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to “protect” it against “pressure” from Chișinău.

In 2023, the world around de facto states and secessionist entities became more and more unstable. As the power structures that have sustained many of these entities “unfreeze,” windows of opportunity opened for changing the status quo on the ground - changes mostly pursued through force.

A newly-published book explores the circumstances around the violence that accompanied Transnistria’s de facto secession from Moldova. Three decades later, finding new answers to old conundrums is key to preventing ongoing tensions from escalating.

As one of thousands of Turkish Cypriots, Sude Dogan is denied Cypriot citizenship because she is a child of a mixed marriage between a Cypriot and a Turkish parent. Tirelessly campaigning for citizenship rights of children in de facto states, she is under a ferocious attack by Turkish nationalists.

Some of the people who were forced to leave Ukraine after the Russian invasion have fled to Transnistria. Why are Ukrainians seeking sanctuary in a de facto state that receives financial and military support from Russia, and what is their status there?

A large share of Transnistria’s economy, including most of its budget, depends on a structural subsidy it receives from Russia in the form of free gas. As Ukraine has promised to stop all Russian pipelines going through its territory by the end of 2024, how will Transnistria cope?