As reported by the press service of the head of state, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko will pay a state visit to Israel on December 22-23.

The agenda of the visit includes a meeting with President R.Rivlin, Prime Minister B.Netanyahu, Speaker of the Knesset Y.Edelstein and Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem.

Mr.Poroshenko will deliver a speech to the Knesset (Parliament) of the State of Israel.

A number of bilateral documents are due to be signed during the visit.

Turkey is determined to cooperate with Ukraine economically, said the Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev. The two countries may sign an agreement on a free trade zone, said Dzhemilev, while commenting on the results of the working visit of the leaders of the Crimean Tatars to Turkey.

According to him, at a meeting with the leadership of the Republic of Turkey, they mainly discussed the development of relations between Ukraine and Turkey. This …

Russia didn't send military experts to Ukraine, said the President's Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov. He claims that the Russian presence in the southeast of Ukraine consisted entirely of volunteers. According to Interfax, those were his comments on the words of Vladimir Putin during his end-of-the-year press conference on December 17th. Putin said that the Russian citizens fighting alongside the separatists in eastern Ukraine were there as volunteers, though he also admitted to the presence of …

NATO plans to increase its presence at the Turkish border due to the unstable situation in the region.

Representatives of NATO member states agreed in Brussels on Friday on the need to strengthen its control of Turkish airspace. This plan will be implemented through the use of fighters and AWACS reconnaissance aircraft. NATO also plans to increase its naval presence in the region. In addition to military training, several naval vessels will be deployed via Turkish ports.

It has not yet been …

The state-owned Ukrainian aerospace company, Antonov, signed a preliminary agreement with Saudi firm Taqnia Aeronautics which will see the delivery of 30 multipurpose Antonov An-178 aircraft to the Royal Saudi Airforce.

Taqnia Aeronautics President Mohammed Al-Ghamdi said that “The signing of this memorandum is the next significant step in the development of our cooperation. We have already signed documents on the cooperation on the project of a new transport aircraft An-132 and the joint …

On Saturday, Representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Oleg Belaventsev, stated that the Crimean Tatar Mejlis no longer represents the interests of the Crimean Tatar people, and has been replaced with the Crimea Interregional Civil Movement.

The Crimean Tatar Mejlis is the highest executive-representative body of the Crimean Tatars, and was officially and explicitly recognized as such by the Ukrainian Rada in March of 2014. While the Mejlis was legalized in 1999, its influence had …

The government of Ukraine has announced that it will not repay the $3 billion debt owed to Russia by the due date of December 20th.  In addition, a $507 million commercial debt owed to several Russian banks will also be suspended.

Kiev cited Russia’s refusal to accept repayment terms already offered to other international creditors.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk did not specify how long the moratorium would last, but acknowledged that the Russian government would take legal action …

The Russian Federation was slated to provide the Crimea with funds for the development of the peninsula and Sevastopol in particular until the year 2020. This assistance was pegged at 15 billion rubles per year. Close to the end of 2015, Crimea has yet to receive any of the funds from the federal program.

According to Russian news agency KrymInform, this was announced by the de-facto Prime Minister of Crimea Sergey Aksenov during a round table conference about the annexed territory and the …