EU ambassadors will make a decision about extending targeted sanctions against Russian citizens involved in the violation of Ukrainian territorial integrity. In particular, 146 people and 37 companies could have their visas restricted and accounts frozen.

As Radio Svoboda reports, citing its own sources in the EU, a decision about extending the sanctions for another six months is expected to be adopted without much discussion by September 15. The parties in question include companies in the …

France, Germany and the United States do not acknowledge the fact of the presence of the Russian troops in the Donbass region. In his article for Apostrophe news portal, Ambassador Oleh Shamshur claims that these countries hope for a return to the prewar order of things.

According to Shamshur, who is the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to France, Western countries realize that Russian troops are in the Donbas region but this position is not public and will not be made …

The Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office has initiated a criminal case against the French deputies who visited the Crimea in July of this year, the Ukrainian MP of the People’s Front party, George Logvinsky, wrote on his Facebook page.

On August 11, Logvinsky reported that the Prosecutor’s Office “initiated pre-trial investigation of criminal proceedings over a criminal offense envisioned by part 1 of Article 332-1 [Violation of the procedure of entry to Ukraine’s temporarily occupied …

Russian servicemen will train to block the Kerch Strait and gas condensate field in the annexed Crimea, the Russian Ministry of Defense press service reported on Wednesday, August 31.

“Formations of various attack forces from the Black Sea Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla will hold a series of trainings in the waters of the sea, aiming to defeat a hypothetical enemy and suppress an attempt to lift a blockade of the Kerch Strait and one of the gas condensate fields, and will also train to free a  …

The Russian Ministry of Economic Development has revised its outlook on the reduction of the GDP for 2016. On the 30th of August, Vedomosti reported that the ministry expects that this index may grow from 0.2% to 0.6% at the end of the year.

The ministry has estimated that the pace of economic decline in the country, compared to the same period of the previous year, has accelerated.

For this year, Russian economists have forecasted a slight increase of the average oil prices, from $40 to $41 …

Over the past year and a half, more and more Russians believe Russia’s intervention in the conflict in eastern Ukraine to be unnecessary, Radio Svoboda reported. According to a poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM), 38% of respondents believe that Moscow should maintain neutrality. In January 2015, there were 28% of respondents, who thought so.

The number of those who are in favor of recognition of independence of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk …

Countries of the former Soviet Union are becoming increasingly unimportant for German business. The volume of export-import operations with major countries of the region, excluding Ukraine, fell significantly. Evidence of this can be found in the data, for the first half of 2016, of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany.

DW reported that this data was exclusively obtained and then distributed to journalists by the German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, which is the …

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin stated that he considers the holding of elections by Russia in the occupied Crimea to be illegitimate as well as unsafe.

“I think that elections in Russia are illegitimate because they take place in the territory of the occupied Crimea. Moreover, they aren’t legitimate either politically or legally,” Klimkin stated in his interview on Ekho Moskvy radio.

In response to a question on security at polling sites in Ukraine during the State …