Recently in France, TV viewers were treated to a remarkable exchange between France’s former education minister, Luc Ferry, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, aka “Dany Le Rouge”, one of the leading lights of May 68 and a former MEP for the Greens.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: “The Baltic countries are in NATO.”

Luc Ferry: “Not at the moment, it depends which ones.”

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: “The three Baltic countries are in NATO.”

Luc Ferry (now irritated): “Not all the Baltic countries…”

The conversation soon descended into a Monty Python-like sketch that would have had any high school history teacher tearing out their hair, the two politicians spatting over whether the Baltics included 3, 4 or 6 countries – confusing the Baltics and the Balkans.

It was a good illustration of how ill-informed and, sometimes disdainful, the West can be toward what it regards as “Eastern Europe” – itself a contested concept. But increasingly, the countries from that region are calling on their bigger neighbours to take them more seriously, starting in the domain of foreign policy with Russia.

Ukrainian scholar Viktoriia Lapa argues that political leaders in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and the Czech Republic have long had a more refined understanding of Russia than France or Germany. According to Lapa, it’s time we listened to them and stopped “westsplaining”.

As spring beacons, there and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere will be in thaw – the Russians call this season “rasputitsa”, literally, “the time without roads”. The question of why ice can be both slippery and sticky, however, is as solid as ever for physicists. Much further down South, atmospheric scientist Sergi González Herrero warns Antarctica is melting rapidly, with temperatures during heatwaves soaring 30C or 40C higher than the average.

The hype around AI continues, with many claiming that it is now capable of empathy. “Not so fast,” says Catrin Misselhorn, a philosopher of science.