Section: Research Organizations & Think Tanks about Ukraine
How Ukraine’s Finance Chief Got Rich
Before becoming Ukraine’s Finance Minister last December, Natalie Jaresko collected $1.77 million in bonuses from a US-taxpayer-financed investment fund where her annual compensation was supposed to be limited to $150,000, according to financial documents filed with the US Internal Revenue Service this year. The near 12-fold discrepancy...
Seeing red over Chinese metal exports
The embers inside Europe’s second-largest blast furnace, at Redcar, in northeast England, will die. For 170 years this has the been world’s most storied steelworks. Plate-iron beams from Redcar undergird Sydney Harbour bridge. Now, it’s become a victim of ‘industrial vandalism’, according to the local...
Britain and the Spectre of Geopolitical Irrelevance
Transatlantic TakeLONDON—It is difficult to underestimate the impact of a new James Bond movie on the British psyche. The films, released now at three- or four-year intervals, give the fleeting sense that Britain still matters on the world stage. Yet Bond has long reflected something of a geopolitical fantasy; his enduring appeal based in part on...
Kabardino-Balkarian Experts Say Sources of Instability in Republic Are Unchanged
In an interview with the website Kavkazskaya Politika, Kabardino-Balkaria’s Deputy Interior Minister Kazbek Tatuev described the republic’s ongoing security dilemmas. According to the official, the underground movement in the republic is structured according to administrative divisions featuring an amir and his deputies (naibs) in...
Belgrade, Moscow Deepen Relations as EU Offers Serbia Further European Integration
Historic ties between Russia and Serbia are deepening even as the European Union attempts to improve its own relationship with Belgrade. Since the beginning of the year, Russia has sought to increase its trade with Serbia, while the latter has pursued Russian assistance in upgrading its military capabilities (see EDM, September 8). Consequently,...
Belarus and Published Opinion-Making
In early November, journalists and analysts convened in Tallinn, Estonia, for the fifth annual meeting of the “Rubicon” conference fully devoted to issues pertaining to Belarus. This year, the major topic was “Belarus as a factor of regional security and stability.” The participants were unable to come to a consensus on whether Belarusian...
Normandy Group Micromanaging Fake ‘Election’ Preparations in Donetsk-Luhansk
Germany’s Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hosted a meeting of his Russian, French, and Ukrainian counterparts (“Normandy” group), on November 6, in Berlin, to lift the December deadline on the implementation of the Minsk armistice in Ukraine. This move, a foregone conclusion, may turn the armistice implementation into a...
Will Saakashvili’s Defeat in Odesa Be His Ukrainian Waterloo?
Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov trounced Solidarity Party’s Sasha Borovik by 53-26 percent in Ukraine’s local elections October 25. Observers reported carousel voting, multiple voting lists, exit poll workers agitating for candidates, and a suspiciously slow vote count.The race for Odesa mayor was a proxy war between Oblast Governor...
Religion & Liberty: Kitchen Redemption
Brandon Chrostowski demonstrates a cooking technique at Edwins Early in October, I took a trip to Cleveland to learn about Edwins Leadership and Restaurant Institute and its founder, Brandon Chrostowski. Edwins is the “teaching hospital” of restaurants. It teaches people with zero hospitality experience the basics of restaurant business through a...
Under the sea: Russia, China and American control of the waterways
The USS Roosevelt sails the South China Sea. US Navy/ReutersIn the summer of 2007, in a bizarre incident shown live on Russian television, scientists accompanied by a couple of senior politicians descended 4,300 meters to the floor of the Arctic Ocean in two Mir mini submarines. Divers then planted a Russian flag on the seabed, and Russia...