US Decides to Provide Ukraine with Lethal Weapons
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on December 22 that the US was going to provide Ukraine with “enhanced defensive capabilities as part of our effort to help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity, to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to deter further aggression.” Among the weapons being sent...
ICT Given Huge Boost in Belarus
Slowly but steadily, Belarus continues to liberalise its regulations to attract more foreign investment. The country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, recently signed a decree on the development of the digital economy, thus making Belarus the first world’s jurisdiction with overall legal regulation of businesses based on blockchain...
Watch List: Dec. 26, 2017
The items listed below represent potential emerging issues that our analysts are tracking. These can be long term or short term, but will be updated daily. If an item on our Watch List becomes critical, we will email you a full analysis explaining its significance. Each Saturday, we will follow up our daily Watch List for each week with our...
The Heinrich Böll Foundation mourns the death of Memorial co-founder Arseny Roginsky
Arseny Roginsky, born in 1946, was “a child of the GULAG”, as his father, an engineer from Leningrad, had been sentenced to imprisonment in the camps in 1938 – and again in 1951. His parents met during their exile in the North. In 1956, after his father’s death in detention, he and his mother moved back to Leningrad. In the 1960s, Arseny...
Brookings experts on Trump’s National Security Strategy
By Suzanne MaloneyOn December 18, 2017, the Trump administration released its first National Security Strategy (NSS). The NSS is a congressionally-mandated document (dating to the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act) that outlines an administration’s appraisal of U.S. national security interests, the global security environment, challenges to U.S....
Putin rival Sobchak defends Crimean Tatar activist on trial for saying, like her, that Crimea Is Ukraine
The ‘trial’ has begun in Russian-occupied Crimea of Suleyman Kadyrov who is facing a possible 5-year sentence for a Facebook comment stating that Crimea is Ukraine – just like Russian presidential candidate Ksenya Sobchak who has spoken out in Kadyrov’s defence …read more Source: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection...
Ukraine’s ex-Prime Minister briefly detained as Russia continues its “most falsified Ukrainian political trial”
Arseny Yatsenyuk was stopped at Geneva Airport on the evening of December 23 because of an ‘arrest warrant’ issued by Russia against the former Ukrainian Prime Minister. The charges of having fought against Russian federal forces in Chechnya 23 years ago are absurd but cost the ex-PM and his daughter a mere ten minutes of their time....
IMF Concludes Latest Moldova Review, Releases New Money
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded its latest review of Moldova on December 20 and immediately made available 22.2 million US dollars as part of the lender’s current three-year funding arrangement. The review was carried out under the terms of its Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility agreements, which total 183.1...
Russia’s Defense Capabilities in 2018
Security Sky high defense spending, as if in preparation for a major war, is depleting Russia. In 2018, Moscow will face the question of how long this can endure. Although the authoritarian regime has not been prepared (so far) to up the ante even further, it cannot significantly cut this type of expenditure either, mostly for domestic political...
Suspended sentence for the savage murder of Maidan journalist Viacheslav Veremiy
The first and only trial so far over the fatal attack on journalist Viacheslav Veremiy during Euromaidan has ended in a four-year suspended sentence with a two-year probation period passed on Yury Krysin for his undisputed part in the killing. Judge Oleh Linnyk from the Shevchenkivsk Court in Kyiv, ignored the prosecutor’s call for a...
