Section: CXSSR
Ukraine’s Parliament Stages Championship Fight, Reminding World It’s Still Ukraine
Bang-up job, guys. Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, reached a new achievement in dysfunction yesterday by descending into a literal brawl. Oleh Barna, a member of President Petro Poroshenko’s eponymously-titled political party (the “Petro Poroshenko Bloc,” a naming convention sadly too common here, though they added back in...
US Secretary of State Has Reporter Thrown Out of Love Session for Islam Karimov
That didn’t go well. At a conference with some of the most repressive (in some cases, the most repressive) of the former Soviet Republics, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry fielded a question about the brutal dictator with whom he’d been sharing a stage — but stopped as his security detail tossed her out. As security men starting...
Ukraine Takes a Breath As Putin Briefly Looks to Syria
Perhaps the only thing one might favorably say of being invaded by Russia these days is that the great bear can no longer walk and chew gum at the same time so well as it once did. So it is that Kyiv is taking a much-needed breather. While some are suggesting that this is the perfect time to tackle endemic corruption, that’s more a matter...
Latvia Curiously Unmoved by Suggestion That Fences Don’t Work
Latvia is building a fence to keep the migrant wave from its shores. That fence will be on the Russian border. For any of you not following the news closely, the current migrant wave is coming through the European Union. Russia is not a member of the EU. Lithuania and Estonia, which border Latvia, are. Latvia has a large, restive, minority ethnic...
Stay Classy, Russia
Russia’s United Nations delegation walked out of a speech by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, citing the speech’s “aggression.” Read that again, to savor it. …read more Source:...
Europe Finds Time to Hector Azerbaijan for Having Tax Laws
Greece is in a constant near-state of collapse. Ukraine burns. Russia’s internal tyranny grows. Southern Europe’s economic stability is questionable at best. The future of the euro as a joint project is dim at best. ISIS rampages across North Africa and Asia Minor, sending waves of refugees into Europe’s strained safety net. Oil...
Is There Still a Ukraine?
Ukraine’s independence day is upon us. It was fun while it lasted. They say that history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Whatever the truth of this axiom, Vladimir Putin is proving that in his own backyard, he understands history better than anyone in Brussels or Washington. While this isn’t exactly the greatest accomplishment in...
A Flawed Report on Azerbaijan Nevertheless Tells Important Truths
A sign of the increasing uselessness of international bodies is that they have trouble getting the obvious right. Earlier this week, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) received a report on Azerbaijan’s democratic development. While the report itself was uneven (more on this below), it nevertheless almost got the most...
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...
Reflections on Lost Chances: Ukraine and the CIS
As the pretend, latest, pointless ceasefire in the Donbass celebrates another week of artillery-fueled “peace,”complete with more destroyed infrastructure and more lives pointlessly lost; and Russia continues to move men, materiel, and memorial markers into Ukraine, the world remains riveted on … Greece, and the inevitable bailout headed its way....
