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Invasion of Ukraine

From shovels to shadows: The Soviet legacy behind Georgia’s authoritarian drift

In the early hours of April 9, 1989, Soviet paratroopers launched a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters in Tbilisi, the capital of the then-Georgian...

EU Commission plans Russian gas phaseout as MEPs propose easing pre-winter storage targets

Ensuring gas supply security ahead of the winter season, the European Parliament approved in Strasbourg on May 8 the Commission's proposal to extend the...

Germany removes key debt brake budget limits in historic move

Rushing to arrive at a workable arrangement before the new post-election German parliament convened on March 25, Friedrich Merz’s victorious CDU/CSU bloc and the...

Ignoring Russia, latest Trump administration Iran sanctions increase pressure on an old enemy

On March 13, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned (“designated” in OFAC language) Iran’s Minister of Petroleum, Mohsen...

Weaning Europe off its Russian gas addiction

The Viking hero Ragnar Lodbrok once said “don't waste your time looking back. You're not going that way.” The words of the former king...

Despite slippage, Germany’s political center appears to hold

Germany’s February 23 parliamentary elections played out largely along predicted lines, with the main question on election day being how many parties would reach...

EU leaders in Kyiv back Ukraine, but Trump won’t blame Russia

On the three-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European leaders travelled to Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and to declare their...

Nord Stream: Still searching for pipe dreams

The unexpected and seemingly uncoordinated start of preliminary "peace negotiations" between the U.S., Russia, (and potentially Ukraine) has fuelled speculation about the future of...

The dance begins: Rubio and Lavrov engage (alone) on Ukraine

Clearly working overtime to move the U.S.-Russia peace effort for Ukraine forward, both countries’ foreign ministers met on February 18 in Riyadh for the...

The Biden administration’s parting gift to Russia: Still more sanctions

Clearly working overtime to underscore the Biden administration’s desire to inflict maximum economic pain on Moscow and its coterie of Ukraine invasion supporters outside...

Undeclared “open season” on energy infrastructure in Europe

Russia is claiming it has shot down nine Ukrainian drones that tried to attack the TurkStream pipeline, which carries Russian gas to Europe through...

Stringent new energy sector sanctions on Russia announced

On January 10, the U.S. Government released a massive new listing of over 200 entities and individuals involved in Russia’s energy sector for Ukraine-related...

NATO and EU strengthen Baltic Sea infrastructure protection after Estlink2 undersea power cable damaged

The damage of an undersea power cable off the coast of Finland in the Baltic Sea is the latest in a series of suspected...

EU searches for alternatives before Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine stops

The Ukrainian government has repeatedly stated that it will not extend a transit agreement, which has provided political, commercial, technical and legal grounds for...

Lula’s G20 Rio Summit: Forgettable but not inconsequential

Seen from the perspective of a week after the November 19-20 Rio de Janeiro Summit, but before the event has completely receded into the...

U.S. sanctions Russian banks, finance officials and securities registrars

The U.S. announced on November 21 new sanctions targeting Russia’s largest remaining non-designated bank (Gazprombank), as well as dozens of other financial institutions and...

Allies condemn the DPRK’s deployment of troops to Russia

The G7 countries, the EU as well as Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand on November 6 expressed "grave concern" over the deployment of...

EU-GCC to expand cooperation on green energy, minerals, and bringing peace to Ukraine

The EU heads of state and government and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) held their first summit on October 16 in Brussels under the...

Drone producers in China and Russia face new U.S. sanctions

In recent months, the Biden administration’s sanctions taskmasters at the State and Treasury Departments have clearly gone into overdrive, designating new targets/entities at least...

Supplying Russia and Iran, Armenia emerges as a new sanctions black hole

For the past two years, Armenia has been attempting to demonstrate its shift towards the West, all the while maintaining its geopolitical role as...

UNGA 2024 overshadowed by Middle East turmoil

At the end of September, as usual, most of the world’s leaders converge on New York for the annual UN General Assembly (UNGA) session...

G7 Foreign Ministers condemn Tehran’s export and Russia’s procurement of Iranian ballistic missiles

The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized powers condemned on September 14 "in the strongest terms" Iran's sales and Russia's purchases...

The plot thickens again for Nord Stream sabotage

New developments and disclosures regarding the act of sabotage that blew up the Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Germany nearly two years ago,...

Hungary, Slovakia sweetheart deal with Brussels keeps the Russian oil flowing through Ukraine

The energy crisis that has been caused by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine continued after Kyiv imposed in late June of this year a...

NATO Summit: “Trump-proofing” Ukraine support while Biden appearances under a microscope

The July 9-11 NATO Summit was originally envisioned as a celebration of the alliance’s 75th anniversary at the organization’s founding venue in Washington D.C.,...

Russia failing to replace lucrative European gas deliveries with sales to China

Russia’s attempts to build the Power of Siberia 2 (PS-2) natural gas pipeline to China appear to be stalling despite repeated statements from Moscow...

Jeffrey Sachs: three times a traitor

An economist with an international reputation, Professor Jeffrey Sachs has increasingly raised his profile in the world media. A U.S. citizen, he accuses his...

Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the U.S. condemn DPRK-Russia Cooperation

During his June 19-20 visit to Pyongyang, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty...

G7 Summit focuses on Ukraine support and shattering Russia’s wartime economy

Despite last week’s expert punditry (itself almost indistinguishable from AI) on the latest G7 decisions as exhibited by the “instant experts” on global issues...

Berlin Ukraine Recovery Conference

Although partially overshadowed by urgent Ukrainian requests for emergency help with its immediate air defense needs, as well as political shockwaves emanating from the...

New wave of U.S. sanctions target Russia’s foreign suppliers and industrial base

On May 1, the U.S. Department of State together with the U.S. Treasury Department unveiled a wide-ranging new list of anti-Russia sanctions covering an...

U.S.-Ukraine Partnership Forum focuses on engaging the private sector in Ukraine’s Recovery

On April 17, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and USAID, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosted...

U.S. and U.K. take new steps to reduce Russia’s revenue from metals

On April 12, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, in coordination with the United Kingdom, issued two new prohibitions in order to disrupt the...

U.S. joins International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children

On March 7, the office of the spokesperson at the U.S. Department of State issued a media note, clearly meant to be circulated in...

Russia sanctions remain a powerful tool to support Ukraine’s defense

Western leaders should not dismiss the two-year long sanctions campaign (as opposed to the 2014 Crimea sanctions) as unsuccessful simply because the Kremlin has...

New U.S. Russia sanctions widen scope, adding 500 new targets

The U.S. State Department released a comprehensive list of new sanctions measures on February 23, clearly the culmination of months of preparation in order...

Canada and aiding the democratic cause in Ukraine

Though the funding of Ukraine’s war against Russia remains the main topic of the American Congress, Ukraine’s relationship with its other key Western partners,...

First Ukraine, now Gaza: the impact of war has set us back on climate change

Discussions of man-made global warming are usually based on a 1-degree Celsius rise since 1880 due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal,...

Kafka in Kyiv — Why artists count in a time of war when the world has gone to hell one more time….

It was three o'clock in the morning and I was on a train heading to a war zone.I asked myself "why" I was going...

Ukraine’s persecuted mayor

Lest it be forgotten, the major thematic issue in post-Maidan and pre-war Ukraine was, and continues to be, the transformation of Ukrainian society along...

New US actions against corruption and Russian malign influence in the Western Balkans

On November 16, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, known by its acronym OFAC, designated eight individuals and six...

Rebuilding Ukraine: Opportunities and concerns for foreign businesses

Such is the scale of the effort required to rebuild Ukraine that the World Bank in March 2023 estimated it at $411 billion. That...

On confronting evil in the modern world

Now is an appropriate time to morally clarify the underlying narrative of what is happening in Israel and Ukraine. Survivors of the last century’s greatest...

It takes time to defeat a dictatorship

Whether it is acknowledged or not, Ukraine and the West are in the process of learning a very hard but essential lesson about the...

UN General Assembly 2023: More progress urgently needed on Sustainable Development Goals

The 78th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) kicked off in New York as planned on September 18, with global attention focused on the so-called...

US Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery announced

President Joe Biden announced on September 14 the appointment of Penny Pritzker as the US Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery.In this role, she...

Moldova’s Maia Sandu is the ‘Iron Lady’ of Eastern Europe

As the war in Ukraine passes the year-and-a-half milestone, a critical ally for Kyiv and Washington is the tiny nation of the Republic of...

Uzbekistan’s remarkable resurgence is a tale of growth, reform, potential

In an era characterized by global turbulence and uncertainty, there are few stories as compelling as that of Uzbekistan. A country that has weathered...

Zelensky Athens visit eclipses Mitsotakis’ informal Western Balkans Summit

Receiving a full house of Western Balkan leaders, as well as several EU luminaries, in Athens on an evening when much of northern Greece...

Possible new solutions to Ukraine’s grain export challenge emerge

In view of the collapse of the UN’s Black Sea Grain Initiative in July at Russia’s insistence, work is proceeding in multiple sectors to...

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