Pressure and sanctions against Russia should lead to the return of Crimea to Ukraine, as stated by the Ukrainian Deputy Minister on issues of the temporarily occupied territories and internally displaced persons, Yuri Hrymchak in an interview with Apostrophe.

"I believe that at some point keeping the occupied Crimea will become so toxic to the Russian Federation that abandoning it will be a salvation for Russia itself as a state," Hrymchak said.

According to the Deputy Minister, a similar …

Delays in the implementation of anti-corruption reforms could endanger not only the progress Ukraine has made in this direction, but also the European Union support of the country, as stated by the Office of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, in response to the open letter signed by RPR (Reanimation Package of Reforms) and a number of public organizations prior to the Association Council’s meeting on December 8th, Evropeyska Pravda reports.

" …

Lithuania accused Gazprom of abuse of its monopoly position in the natural gas market and imposed a fine of EUR 42 million, TASS reports. Vilnius expects to collect the fine using Gazprom’s property in other European countries.

Lithuanian Ministry of Justice has prepared a special action plan for the recovery of the fine and any accrued interest. The plan outlines the actions of various Lithuanian ministries and departments. The accusations of Lithuania relate to the events of 2012, when the …

The main difficulty in working to resolve the crisis in Donbas is that Russia continues to deny its role in the fighting, stated Kurt Volker, the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, as reported by Voice of America.

“Russia is continuing to deny its own role in this and that it has nothing to do with the separatist governments that it has set up, and that it changes the leaders at will as they did in Luhansk just last month,” Volker said.

According to him, by dragging out the …

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the new US national security strategy "is of an imperial nature, and shows a persistent unwillingness to abandon a unipolar world", TASS news agency reports.

"A cursory reading of [the strategy], particularly those parts in which our country is mentioned in one way or another, in general [shows that] the imperial nature of the document is evident; there is an unwillingness to abandon the unipolar world, with …

The Ukrainian delegation is preparing an appeal to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly regarding the presence of Serbian mercenaries in the Donbas, as reported on Facebook by the chairman of the permanent delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, People's Deputy Iryna Friz.

"We are preparing an appeal from our delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly regarding this issue and I am sure that it is necessary to contact all international institutions to inform them about the shameful fact of …

The Ministry of Defense of Russia has shipped a batch of small arms, artillery, armored hardware, anti-aircraft weapons and also paramedical, land surveying and other equipment, for free, to its counterpart in the Republic of Tajikistan, t RBC news agency reported cutting the Russian Ministry of Defense.

In particular, the Tajik Army received three T-72B1 tanks, nine BTR-80, BTR-70 armored personnel carriers, BMP-2 armored fighting vehicles, three D-30 howitzers, three 23M1 air-defense systems, …

The Vienna Court of Appeals has decided to refuse Spain’s request for the extradition of Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. The court's decision, which was reported by Levyy Bereg, is final and cannot be appealed.

The court thus confirmed the legality of the decision taken in October by the Higher Regional Court of Vienna.

The Court of Appeals decided to refuse Firtash’s extradition to Spain due to the absence of a crime, place and time.

"The Court ruled to deny the Spanish request for …