Five Things to Know About the Zapad-2017 Military Exercise
25 September 2017 Mathieu Boulègue TwitterLinkedIn Research Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme As Russian forces leave Belarus, what are the main lessons to draw from the Zapad-2017 drills? Servicemen take part in the joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises Zapad-2017. Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images Following seven days of...
The great decommunisation. Ukraine’s wartime historical policy
The war with Russia which began in 2014 has triggered serious changes in the way history is thought about by the Ukrainian public, especially in opinion-forming circles. The liberal reflection critical about the nationalist tradition initiated somewhat earlier has been rejected since wartime requires heroic narratives above all. …read more...
Crimea: Crimean Tatar Leader Convicted on Spurious Charges
(Kyiv) – A Russian court in Crimea on September 27, 2017, convicted a prominent Crimean Tatar leader on bogus separatism charges following an unfair trial, Human Rights Watch said today. The court imposed a two-year prison sentence and banned Ilmi Umerov, the Crimean Tatar leader, from involvement in public activities, which includes contact with...
EU Offers Help to Tackle Food Inferiority in Central and Eastern Europe
Multinationals have “cheated and misled” the east for years, the European Commission says. …read more Source: Transitions Online...
September 26th, 2017
CHINA China Blocks WhatsApp Messages The Daily Telegraph Chinese authorities appear to have severely disrupted the WhatsApp messaging app in the latest step to tighten censorship as they prepare for a major Communist Party congress next month. Users in China have reported widespread disruptions in recent days to the Facebook-owned service, which...
September 25th, 2017
CHINA China Fines Social-Media Giants for Hosting Banned Content Josh Chin, The Wall Street Journal Chinese internet regulators said they have hit operators of three of the country’s biggest social-media platforms with the maximum fine allowable under a new cybersecurity law for hosting fake news, pornography and other forms of banned...
September 21st, 2017
CHINA China’s “Fallen” Officials Leave Gaps, Silenced Voices in Communist Party Ranks RFA As the ruling Chinese Communist Party gears up for a crucial, five-yearly congress next month, President Xi Jinping is taking far-reaching steps to ensure that no critical voices are raised against him, analysts said. A popular chat show on the Hong...
Eastern Europe’s Competitive Edge
Summary Eastern Europe is the most dynamic part of the European continent. So great is its potential that it is among the subjects at our annual conference in October. But before we can explain why this is, we must first define what we mean by Eastern Europe. For the purposes of this Deep Dive, Eastern Europe includes nine countries: Bulgaria,...
An End in Sight for Ukraine … Maybe
By Jacob L. Shapiro The conflict in Ukraine has developed an interminable quality. We are now over three years into the war in Donbass, and every day brings new updates on cease-fire violations or steps forward and backward on implementing the Minsk accord. This can make it hard to determine when conditions have actually changed. There have been...
A U.N. Peacekeeping Operation Is the Only Way Forward In Ukraine
A complete cessation of violence in southeastern Ukraine, the essential first condition of Minsk implementation, requires nothing less than a full-scale peacekeeping operation authorized by the U.N. Security Council. | Русский …read more Source: Carnegie Endowment for International...

