• Russian plane violated Lithuanian airspace twice last week

    The press service of the Ministry of Defense of Lithuania reported that Lithuanian fighters intercepted a Russian aircraft on two separate occassions last week.

    On February 17th, fighter jets were scrambled from the Siauliai Airbase to intercept a Russia IL-20 transport plane heading for Kaliningrad. Two days later, the same aircraft was intercepted and esorted by Lithuanian fighters on its way back to mainland Russia.

    According to the Ministry of Defense of Lithuania, the Russian IL-20 …

  • Evidence continues to mount suggesting Russian ground troops are active in Syria

    Howitzers MSTA-B, tanks T-90A, armored personnel carrier BTR-82A - photos of these weapons were posted on the Citeam.org website, which suggests that all these weapons were transferred from the Russian airbase, Hmeymim, to the east of Syria, as reported by Deutsche Welle.

    Citeam.org is a website belonging to the "team involved in the investigation of military conflicts in Ukraine and Syria." The team, founded in May 2015, is known under the English name the Conflict Intelligence Team. One of …

  • Yukos shareholders: 1 billion euros in Russian assets were expropriated in France

    Former Yukos shareholders are seeking financial recovery from Russia in the amount of 50 billion dollars in accordance with the decision of the Arbitration Court in The Hague.  This refers to Russian assets seized in France.  The amount of one billion euros is roughly 86 billion rubles.   This information is according to the RBC daily newspaper with reference to Group MENATEP Limited (GML), a holding company representing the former shareholders of Yukos.

    The ventures of the Federal State …

  • The documents of the National Security and Defense Council: Ukraine wasn’t able to protect even Kiev in spring 2014

    On the 28th of February 2014, the leaders of Ukraine attended an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) in order to determine how the country should react to Russia’s actions. The participants of the meeting concluded that Russia was ready for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2014. During that time, Russia was carrying out the occupation of Crimea with the use of Special Forces.

    Regarding the eastern border of Ukraine, 38,000 Russian servicemen with …

  • Crimean Tatars seek to save their mother tongue

    Every year, on the 21st of February, International Mother Language Day is celebrated worldwide. About a half of the 6,000 world languages are threatened with extinction. The Crimean Tatar language is the third most spoken language in Ukraine. However, despite this fact, according to the official data of UNESCO, the language is quickly dying, as reported by Radio Svoboda.

    Now, some media, universities and activists have taken on the challenge of bringing the language back to life. Newspapers …