The American destroyer USS Carney entered the Black Sea, as reported by  twitter user Yörük Işık, who tracks the movement of warships across the Bosporus.

As noted by Yörük Işık, the US Navy will “boost the patrols in the Black Sea amid tensions in the region”. This is the fourth such deployment of the destroyer.

The USS Carney reported on Facebook that on January 3rd it left the Italian port of Brindisi, where it stayed for the New Year. The ship began its fourth patrol on December 2, 2017. …

In an interview with the newspaper Bild, General Riho Terras, Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces said that he believes that Russia modeled war with NATO during the Zapad 2017 exercises.

"I’ll be blunt: during the Zapad 2017 exercises, Russia simulated a full-scale military attack against NATO. It was not directed only against the Baltic states, as the theater of exercises stretched from the North to the Black Sea. The scale and the area of ​​maneuvers were much larger than officially …

The Constitutional Court of Moldova, once again suspended the powers of the country's president, Igor Dodon, on Friday, January 5.

The decision was made at the request of a MP from the Democratic Party, Sergey Syrbu, who addressed the Constitutional Court the day before.

The deputy justified his request by the fact that the president repeatedly refused to promulgate the law passed by the Parliament on combating Russian propaganda. In the text of the appeal, he asked the judges to consider the …

The Russian military base in Syrian Khmeimim was shelled using an 82-millimeter automatic mortar Vasilek (Cornflower), writes Russian newspaper Vestnik Mordovii (Herald of Mordovia) quoting military experts.

The mortar has a small weight (just over 630 kilograms) that allows to place it, for example, in a minivan, and high rate of fire (up to 120 shots per minute). Vasilek can fire in single and automatic mode using four-round clips. It can use high-explosive, armor-piercing and smoke shells, …

The Deputy Minister for Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine, Yuriy Hrymchak, stated on ZIK TV that in 2014-2015, the Ukrainian authorities considered blowing up the Russian gas pipeline that goes through the entirety of Ukraine and brings gas into the countries of Europe.

“Look at 2014-2015.. Do you think there were no plans to blow up the gas transmission system? <...> I am telling you about the plans at the state level,” Hrymchak said.

According to …

Disagreements have emerged between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kirill of Moscow, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), following the start of the conflict  in eastern Ukraine. This was noted by Andrey Pertsev, researcher from the Carnegie Moscow Center, as reported by Voice of America.

“It has long been known that the president and the patriarch’s relations became strained after the start of the Ukrainian crisis and the conflict in the Donbas,” the researcher observes. …

In 2017, Ukraine imported over 19 million tons of coal, most of which came to the country from Russia, reported Lb.ua news agency with reference to the data of Ukraine's State Fiscal Service.

It is noted that Ukraine paid more than $2.7 billion for coal. Russian coal imports in 2017 cost $1.5 billion or 56.57% of the total supply, followed by US supplies worth $682 million or 24.85%, and Canadian coal worth $182 million or 6.64%. Other countries have also delivered coal to Ukraine, all worth $3 …

Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said that Ukrainians working in Poland are saving that country’s economic competitiveness.

"Nearly 300,000 [Ukrainians] have been granted work permits [by Poland], and more than 2 million have received visas, spending several billion euros (Polish statistics). To me, as a mathematician, this ratio seems very attractive to the Polish economy. Even without taking into account the fact that Ukrainians are saving the competitiveness of the Polish economy," …