Has the West Lost Its Grip at Last?
A spare but intriguing piece at the Financial Times: Instead, the worry is that the prolonged economic instability that could result from a default would deepen the political hostility towards the rest of Europe among the Greek electorate, opening an opportunity for Russia to boost its sway in the country. Throughout the Ukraine crisis, Moscow...
Prisoners’ Dilemma in Ukraine
Ukraine’s prisoner-of-war problem is becoming more intractable by the day, fueled by criminal tendencies and systemic failures of the Ukrainian state. …read more Source: Carnegie Endowment for International...
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Annual Session to mark Organization’s founding in Helsinki birthplace
COPENHAGEN, 23 June 2015 – Nearly 300 lawmakers from more than 50 states in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe will return to the OSCE’s Finnish birthplace next month to mark the 40th anniversary of the Organization’s founding and address some of today’s most pressing security issues at the 2015 Annual...
Latest from OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine based on information received as of 19:30 (Kyiv time), 22 June 2015
This report is for the media and the general public. The SMM monitored the implementation of the “Package of measures for the implementation of the Minsk agreements”. Its monitoring was restricted by third parties and security considerations*. The situation at and around the Donetsk airport was tense. The SMM observed ceasefire violations in...
Kyiv Accuses Volunteer Fighters of Rape and Torture, Hundreds Arrested at Yerevan Price Protest
Plus, Yanukovych makes half-hearted apology for Maidan killings; activists plan to deliver banned abortion drugs to Poland via UAV. …read more Source: Transitions Online...
The Economic Great Game for Peace in Eastern Europe
Whatever new geopolitical order emerges between the EU, Ukraine, and Russia, will rest on a joint understanding about the economic relationship between the three. …read more Source: Carnegie Endowment for International...
New Centre-Right Government in Finland
Finland is directly affected by two of the biggest crises in the history of European integration: the troubles of the euro and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The new Finnish government, formed by the liberal Centre Party, the populist Finns Party and the conservative National Coalition Party, faces major economic, foreign policy and security...
Scandal in the Ukrainian Security Service: Last Breath of the Old Political System?
On June 18, 248 Ukrainian lawmakers—out of the 422 present in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament)—approved President Petro Poroshenko’s request to fire Valentyn Nalyvaychenko as head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) amid rising public criticism and top officials’ growing recriminations over the government’s inability to...
Saakashvili Grapples With Daunting Odds in Ukraine’s Odesa
Three weeks ago, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appointed Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, as governor of Ukraine’s Odesa province, with a dual mission: to jump-start reforms based on his experience in reforming Georgia, and to consolidate Ukrainian control in a territory potentially targeted by Russia....
Financial Defaults May Loom for North Caucasian Republics
Russian news agencies reported in early June that Novgorod Oblast in central Russia had become the country’s first region to default on its financial obligations. An official from the Novgorod financial department told RBK news agency that the region failed to make a payment of $33 million to the Russian state bank VTB (Rbc.ru, June 9). VTB...
