Online voters suggest that former President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, is the third most corrupt official in the world. Transparency International, the NGO who organized the poll, published a preliminary list of the 15 most corrupt officials and organizations in the world, though votes will continue to be cast for another two months.

On December 11th, the third day of open internet voting, Yanukovich took third place on the list. Polling began December 9th, and will continue until February …

In his address to the UN Security Council on December 11th, the Director of Operations for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, John Ging, called on the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region to allow free access to humanitarian missions in the area.

According to Ging, there are currently only two international humanitarian organizations that are allowed to operate in the regions of Eastern Ukraine that are controlled by pro-Russian separatists, the AFP …

Vladimir Putin stated that Russia supports not only Al-Assad’s forces in Syria, but also a leading group in the Syrian opposition, the Free Syrian Army. The fighters of the Western-backed moderate group have at times cooperated with Syrian government forces during operations against militants of the so-called Islamic State. At a meeting with the leadership of the Russian Defense Ministry, Putin said that Russia had provided air support for the Free Syrian Army for the first time. At the same …

The Donbass region separatists are still holding 131 people hostage. Yari Tandit, advisor to the chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), told Radio Freedom that they can only confirm the fate of 57 of those people. “We are looking for information on the places in which the remaining 74 hostages are situated,” said Tandit.

On December 8th, Irina Gerashchenko reported that the insurgents of Donbass are still holding 140 Ukrainian prisoners. She is the chairman of the Parliamentary …

Russia fears of Baltic countries arranging a blackout of Kaliningrad

Moscow fears this blackout because work began laying cables between Lithuania and Poland, and a further cable to Sweden will soon be added. This means that the Baltic states could soon be in a position to implement such a blackout. As a preventative measure, Russia will have to invest billions of dollars to ensure supplies to Kaliningrad, and it seems as though Russia plans to build four new power plants there. The opinion on …

The "Islamic State" organization has received approximately half a billion dollars from the oil trade.  Most of this amount is directed to the Syrian authorities and some part goes to Kurdish areas and Turkey.

According to the Treasury of the United States, about one third of the capital of the terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS) comes from trading black market oil.  The IS’s holdings are estimated at about $1.5 billion, said a senior official of the U.S. Treasurer on Thursday, …

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko delivered a warning against "calming" reports on the first stage of anti-corruption actions. He claimed that the results of current efforts to fight corruption were unsatisfactory and that more decisive steps would be required at the start of next year.

"We have to prove that the system, carefully crafted during the entire year of 2015, finally works for Ukraine and is able to bring good results," Poroshenko said during the second meeting of the National …

On Thursday, December 10th, Interfax reported on the findings of the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation (Rosstat). The data indicates that the number of poor in Russia from January to September 2015 increased by millions of people and reached 20.3 million.

2.3 million Russians joined the poverty line this year.  The total poverty rate in the country amounted to 14.1%, an increase of almost 2% compared to the year 2014.  The largest number of poor in 2015 was in the …