Contents tagged with Europe

  • Hungary: Ukrainian language law is unacceptable

    Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the language law which was approved on Thursday by the Verkhovna Rada is unacceptable, reported Evropeyska Pravda, citing the online news website, Hirado.

    According to Szijjarto, the Ukrainian language law violates Hungarian minority rights and reflects the vision of President Petro Poroshenko, who, according to the Hungarian minister, promoted anti-Hungarian policies.

    “However, an overwhelming majority of Ukrainian voters chose to elect another …

  • Belarus loses at least $100 million due to poor quality oil from Russia

    Belarus has partially resumed its exportation of light oil products to Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, after being forced to suspend it due to poor quality oil from Russia. However, its losses have already exceeded $100 million.

    “We are now assessing the losses we have experienced in April. At present, they are in the region of $100 million in terms of lost revenue from oil products,” commented Vladimir Sizov, deputy head of the Belarusian state oil concern Belneftekhim on Thursday 25 …

  • Lithuania calls for tougher sanctions against Russia over issuance of passports for Donbas residents

    ​​The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry condemns Russia's decision to simplify Russian passports issuance to the residents of the occupied Donbas and calls on the international community to tighten sanctions, reads the statement published on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania website.

    “The Foreign Ministry strongly condemns the decree of Russian President Vladimir Putin, simplifying the procedure of granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainian citizens living in the …

  • Czech Republic follows Poland, rejects contaminated Russian oil

    The scandal surrounding the incident at Transneft, which resulted in chlorine-containing substances mixing with Russian oil, continues to gain momentum.

    Poland stopped accepting the oil and closed the western line of the Druzhba oil pipeline, which leads to Germany, early on Thursday. Now the Czech Republic has also stopped accepting the Russian oil, Reuters reports, citing two sources in the market.

    Alongside Hungary and Slovakia, the Czech Republic receives oil through the second, southern …

  • Kremlin: Russia strengthening troops in response to NATO activity near its borders

    Russia is increasing the number of troops in its Western and Southern military districts in response to active NATO operations near the country's borders, said the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, during the Moscow Security Conference.

    “To counterweigh the deployment of Alliance troops near Russia’s borders as well as the NATO initiative, we are forced to increase the number of troops in its Western and Southern military districts, RNS quoted Gerasimov. The …

  • Denmark stopped Nord Stream 2

    Nord Stream 2 AG, the operating company of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, has been forced to comply with the demands of the Danish regulator and submit an application to lay the pipe within Denmark’s exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea.

    This is the third such application that the company has submitted. Originally, Gazprom intended to lay the pipeline along the same route as the first Nord Stream pipe, but when it became clear that Denmark could simply prohibit the laying of this …

  • Latvia: Soviet Union’s deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 was genocide

    The foreign affairs commission of Latvia’s parliament, the Saeima, has given its support to a report by the Foreign Ministry which considers the Soviet Union’s deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 a genocide, TV-net reports.

    In addition, the commission has ratified a draft statement by Janis Dombrava, a member of the right-wing National Alliance, that “the USSR in the 20th century deliberately carried out a genocide against all the peoples and ethnic groups residing in the occupied …

  • US moves U-2 strategic reconnaissance planes to Europe

    Two U-2S ultra-high altitude reconnaissance aircraft belonging to the US Air Force crossed the Atlantic from mainland US and landed at the Fairford airfield in England on Tuesday, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

    The planes transferred from the Beale Air Force Base in California are named DRAGON86 and DRAGON88 and have the registration numbers 80-1071 and 80-1094 respectively.

    No official reason for the transfer of these two aircraft to Europe has been disclosed.

    Until recently, the Fairford …

  • Poland reports deterioration of Russian oil quality

    Poland has recorded a deterioration in the quality of oil received from Belarus via the Druzhba pipeline, reports Forsal citing the Polish pipeline operator PERN.

    PERN received a fax from Gomeltransneft, which reported an increased content of organochlorine compounds in the raw materials, and later “noted this in crude oil that entered Poland”. PERN informed the Polish and German refineries about the decline in oil quality.

    “We are monitoring the situation on an ongoing basis,” stated the …

  • Danish Defense Minister visits Donbas

    Lieutenant General Sergey Naev, commander of the Joint Forces Operational Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, held a meeting with a delegation led by Danish Minister of Defense Claus Frederiksen in Kramatorsk, reported the press center of the Ukrainian Joint Forces Operational Headquarters of the Armed Forces on Facebook.

    Naev spoke about the many of ways in which the groups armed by the Russian Federation had violated the cease-fire, specifically, their use of heavy weapons. Since …