Section: Research Organizations & Think Tanks about Ukraine
Journalist faces mandatory 5-year sentence for saying Russia should leave Crimea
Any lingering doubt that Russia would genuinely convict a journalist for expressing the same position as the United National and all democratic countries has now been quashed. On Jan 20, Mykola Semena and his lawyer were presented with an indictment that is both eerily Soviet and openly surreal …read more Source: Kharkiv Human Rights...
Putin’s “Personal Army” to crush dissent with special electric shock batons
Members of the new National Guard which the Kremlin has acknowledged may be used against ‘unauthorized mass protests’ are to be armed with electric-shock batons with a range of 5 metres and stun grenades. …read more Source: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection...
The Geopolitics of 2017 in 4 Maps
Originally produced on Jan. 16, 2017 for Mauldin Economics, LLC George Friedman and Jacob L. Shapiro International relations and geopolitics are not synonymous… at least, not the way we understand them at Geopolitical Futures. “International relations” is a descriptive phrase that encompasses all the ways countries behave toward one another....
Kleptocracy Daily: January 23, 2017
News A lawsuit alleges that foreign payments to Donald Trump’s businesses violate the Constitution. (NYT) Trump will never release his tax returns, says a top advisor – despite previously promising to do so eventually (and 74 percent of Americans thinking he should). (WaPo) U.S. counterintelligence agencies investigated Gen. Mike...
The Trumputin trap
“A grand bargain in Europe between the US and Russia could be a terrible mistake.” Published on: politico.eu By PAUL TAYLOR 1/19/17, 5:31 AM CET Updated 1/20/17, 9:35 PM CET Donald Trump is an avowed admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sees himself as a brilliant dealmaker. As he settles in following his inauguration, the newly...
Guide for the Diplomatically Perplexed: Trump 1.0
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 400 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The “art of the deal” does not translate directly from the world of business to the world of diplomacy. Diplomatic deal-making requires mastery of four basic elements: integration of diplomacy with the credible threat of force; the rewarding of friends and the punishing of enemies (rather...
The First Maidan Victims
It is three years since Maidan activists Serhiy Nihoyan and Mikhail Zhyznevsky were killed on Hrushevsky St in Kyiv. 21-year-old Serhiy Nihoyan died first, killed by sniper bullets to the head and chest. An hour later it was learned that 25-year-old Mikail Zhyznevsky had also been shot and killed …read more Source: Kharkiv Human Rights...
Russian media distort mass anti-Trump protests, while Trump blasts ‘dishonest’ US media
Russia broke with a tradition extending far back into Soviet times this weekend. Anti-government protests are normally top news for pro-Kremlin media, but not this time. News of First Lady Melania Trump’s venture onto Twitter got more headline coverage on at least one website, and the photos everywhere appeared carefully selected to conceal...
Top Ukraine court posts for super-rich judges & defender of Yanukovych’s dictatorship laws?
Among the candidates for posts in the Supreme Court [SCU] are the former President of the Court who justified Viktor Yanukovych’s draconian ‘dictatorship’ laws and judges involved in politically motivated prosecutions. The CHESNO civic movement has sounded the alarm to ensure that purportedly fair competition does not re-establish the...
Loose-cannon Trump enters the tinderbox of US-Russia-China relations
A Trump administration raises many questions about how America’s relationships with other world powers will play out. Reuters/Lucy NicholsonDonald Trump’s inauguration speech had one simple message: “America first”. His was an inward-looking vision of the future in which America would set about regaining all that has been stolen from...
