Ukraine’s acting President Turchynov admitted that his forces were “helpless” to quell the unrest in Eastern Ukraine, as the pro-Russian insurgency is on the rise. Now the goal would be to prevent the pro-Russian insurgency from spreading in the Kharkiv and Odessa regions. This amounts to a declaration of defeat.

India is hyped as being very modern, yet in the midst of the towering buildings and corporate plazas there are huge swathes of ghettos overflowing with intense poverty and misery, where human beings are forced to live in bestial conditions of unhygienic and filthy dwellings. The artificial glitter and the facade of modernity fails to conceal the primitive social and economic conditions that prevail across India.

This Easter, as every year, socialists and Republicans across Ireland will commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising. Yet with only two years to go until the centenary, the aim of the Workers’ Republic that James Connolly appears as far off as ever. Fightback – the Marxists in Ireland – comment on the continuing crisis of capitalism in Ireland and the response from Labour and the small forces to their left.