“Lukashenko’s vengeance,” headlines Gazeta Wyborcza after a Belarusian court sentenced Andrei Sannikau, Lukashenko’s rival in the 2010 presidential elections, to five years in a penal colony for organising a street demonstration, attended by 20,000 people, on the day of the ballot (19 December). “This is the first but not the last of the dictator’s rivals who has gone to jail because they dared challenge him”, writes the Warsaw daily, noting three more of the incumbent’s counter-candidates are awaiting sentences. Pavel Sheremet, a Belarusian journalist who spent time in jail several years ago and last year was deprived of Belarusian citizenship, says that President Lukashenko wants to achieve two things: exacting vengeance against his political opponents and, by imprisoning them or refusing passports, creating a group of “hostages”. These can serve as bargaining chips in talks with the West on lifting sanctions against Belarus or de-freezing aid for the country.
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies. 
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either? 
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku.