Edition 10: Shifting Power

Platform Mag is pleased to pass a historic milestone with this release marking our tenth edition. World events have certainly proven since our first edition that nothing truly remains stagnant and that things have been much changed. Indeed, the edition's cover image, "The Congress of Berlin '', denotes this theme of changes in power. The event that this painting covers was the 1878 Berlin conference of the European great powers. The result of this conference was the carving out of new states and spheres of influence between the great powers in the Balkans in the wake of a Russian invasion of the Ottoman Empire. In our own time, the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has continued to capture the world's attention with the conflict itself perhaps being a marker of a broader shift in the global balance of power. In this edition we are pleased to present two articles with somewhat dissimilar views on the shaping of the conflict. One article argues that the global reaction toward the war has not been to the West's advantage while another article argues that Putin is increasingly desperate for a victory in Ukraine to save face from what has been a costly quagmire for Russia.