Possible Iranian Links to the Claimed Houthi Missile Launch Against the UAE
On December 3, Houthi rebels in Yemen announced that they had fired a “winged cruise missile” at the construction site for al-Barakah nuclear power plant, located 230 km southwest of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. UAE military authorities dismissed the claim, asserting that no strike was launched in their direction and that...
Russian who defended Ukraine in Donbas driven out to face imprisonment in Russia
Yulia Tolopa, a Russian who fought for Ukraine in one of the first volunteer battalions back in 2014 and whose small daughter is a Ukrainian citizen, is being forced out of Ukraine despite the strongest of grounds for fearing her persecution in Russia. The situation is insultingly absurd since she can only obtain the document confirming her lack...
Watch List: Dec. 4, 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...
FTAC: Political, Racial, Religious Singularity and Purity / Distribution x Equilibrium
Perhaps by way of the editor’s accidental tourism in poli-sci and poli-psy, BackChannels has from the start been about the distillation of basic concepts and values. That’s evident down the column of the left sidebar (which hasn’t been updated in some time): there are the universals — Compassion Empathy Justice Humility...
Wizz Air in Huge Polish & Ukrainian Expansion
Reflecting customer demand, Wizz Air has announced 15 new Polish and Ukrainian routes, which will connect Katowice with Porto, Munich, Lviv, Kharkiv, Malaga, Faro, Podgorica; Gdansk with Lviv; Warsaw with Podgorica and Poznan with Dortmund from March 2018. “We expect to deliver 30 million passengers in 2018, as Wizz Air currently offers over 550...
#GIJC17: Spotlight on Africa
Check out our #GIJN17 highlights in Chinese, German, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and our spotlight on Africa. At the heart of Africa’s City of Gold — where people from around the world have been trying to dig up their own piece of regional riches since the 1800s — lies the University of the Witwatersrand, one of the continent’s most...
From Tweets to Tanks
This article comes from The Buzz Around the Ballot edition of Visegrad Insight 2/2017 devoted do media landscapes and disinformation in Central Europe. Read full contents page here. Interview with Robert Pszczel, Senior Officer for Russia and the Western Balkans, Public Diplomacy Division, NATO HQ (Former Director of NATO Information Office in...
Ukrainian political prisoner Volodymyr Balukh released under ‘insane’ house arrest
After being jailed in Russian-occupied Crimea for almost a year on flagrantly falsified charges, Ukrainian activist and farmer Volodymyr Balukh has been placed under house arrest. While Balukh’s elderly mother is, of course, overjoyed, Balukh himself called the ruling ‘insane’, since it prohibits him from leaving the house (or using...
Crimean Tatar political prisoner jailed for Crimea Solidarity named Ukraine’s Volunteer of the Year
One of the Crimea Solidarity activists arrested in Russian-occupied Crimea in October this year has been named Ukraine’s Volunteer of the Year. Marlen (Suleyman) Asanov had long been known for his generosity in helping people in need. When, under Russian occupation, the armed searches and arrests began, he became an active member of Crimea...
European Commission Withholds 600 Million Euros from Ukraine
The European Commission will not transfer the third and last 600 million euro tranche of the current 1.8 billion euro macro-financial assistance programme to Ukraine, approved in 2015. “Four of the measures linked to the third and final tranche of this MFA currently remain outstanding,” a European Commission statement reads. “Against this...
