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EU Council to Discuss Situation in Ukraine
On January 18th, at the meeting of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, the Council of the European Union will discuss the situation in Ukraine, reported the Council's press service. A discussion on the current situation in Syria and Iraq will also be on the agenda.
At the end of last year, the leaders of the "Normandy Four" (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France) held talks over the phone and agreed to extend the validity of the Minsk Agreements into 2016. They also arranged another meeting of …
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Finland Expects Thousands of Refugees to Enter Via Russia In 2016
Finland’s national public-broadcasting company, Yle, cited the Lapland border service, who predicted that in the year 2016 about 7,500 refugees could enter Finland through the border with Russia. This forecast was made based on the current rate of arrival of asylum-seekers.
Since the beginning of the year around 200 refugees crossed the Finnish-Russian border through the checkpoints Salla and Raja-Jooseppi. Most of the refugees were Iraqis, Afghans, Nepalese and Syrians. Last year 700 …
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Political Analyst: Poroshenko's Presidency Won’t Last Into 2017
Petro Poroshenko’s ratings as the current President of Ukraine will become critically low in the summer and autumn of 2016, according to one political analyst. As a result, he will be unable to hold on to his office.
This forecast was made by Ruslan Bortnik, the head of the Ukrainian Institute for Analysis and Management of Politics, during the press conference with the news agency GolosUA.
“Our president has only a year left. The same prediction has been made by his allies and the members of …
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France Calls on Russia to Halt Airstrikes against Civilians in Syria
After meeting with one of the coordinators for the Syrian opposition, Rayad Farid Hijab, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development, Laurent Fabius, told reporters that Syria and Russia must halt military operations against civilians. According to the Minister they have discussed the absolute need to halt military actions which Russian and Syrian Government forces are taking against civilians. Fabius specified that the discussion was focused on the small Syrian town of …
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Poland to become NATO Response Force Framework State
Poland will become part of the NATO Response Force within four years. The Polish Vice-Minister, Tomasz Szatkowski, reported that the Polish Ministry of Defense has already been preparing for this duty.
“Our contribution to the framework will consist of five battalions. As a framework state, we want to invite our partners from the Visegrad Group to join this effort. There has been a prior agreement that part of these forces will be under the flag of Visegrad," the Vice-Minister, Tomasz …
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Ukrainian Gas Company Files Lawsuit against Russia
Ukrnafta has filed a lawsuit against Russia with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, the Netherlands. The details of the lawsuit aren’t known. It was noted on the PCA website that the proceeding was initiated in accordance with an Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, signed by the Russian Federation and Ukraine in 1998.
Moreover, according to the PCA database, eleven more Ukrainian companies (Stabil, Rubenor, Rustel, Kirovohrad-Nafta, Krym-Petrol, Pirsan, Trade- …
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Pierre Richard to Visit Crimea
Tickets to a show featuring Pierre Richard, a French actor and director, are being sold in Crimea. According to the advertisement, Richard will perform in a comedy called Pierre Richard III on February 10th in Simferopol at a local musical theater and on February 11th in Sevastopol, at the Officer’s Club of the Black Sea Fleet of Russia.
There is no mention of any events taking place in annexed Crimea on the French actor’s official website. According to tour organizers, Richard will arrive in …
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Cause of Mikhail Lesin’s Death still Unclear
Assumptions surrounding the fact that Mikhail Lesin, the Russian media magnate who died in the U.S.A., had relations with the FBI has gained new momentum.
Margarita Simonyan, the Editor-in-Chief of the English language television news network, RT and the international news agency Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today), in an interview with Echo of Moscow, urged people not to believe the reports from The Daily Beast that Mikhail Lesin, the former general director of Gazprom Media Holdings, had …
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Russian Bombers Kill Seventeen in Aleppo
Seventeen people were killed and 35 more were injured as a result of a Russian Air Force attacks on the opposition-controlled districts of Sukari and Ameriye in the Syrian city of Aleppo, according to representatives of the Civil Defense of Aleppo. Among the dead and wounded are women and children.
Civil Defense teams conducted search and rescue operations in the area of the air strikes. The wounded have been taken to city hospitals. It is reported that as a result of Russian air strikes in …
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Russia to Test Sixteen Ballistic Missiles in 2016
The Strategic Rocket Forces of the Russian Federation (RVSN RF) plans to test launch 16 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in 2016.
According to the website of the Russian Defense Ministry, the purpose of these launches is to develop new weapons and test the technical readiness of missile systems.
Earlier it was reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin, during the Annual Expanded Board of the Ministry of Defence in December of 2015, announced that among the priority tasks of the Armed …