• Can Ukraine free itself from its dependence on Russian electricity?

    Ukraine is going to continue to import electricity from Russia because the Soviet power system in place does not have the ability to generate sufficient electricity. The Ministry of Energy and Coal Mining stated the import of electricity from the Russian Federation is necessary because, “Electricity is a good which can’t be stored. It has to be generated at the very moment when consumption occurs.” There are several reasons why the current Ukranian system is not able to generate adequate …

  • Trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine Finds Serious Ceasefire Violations

    Following a recent meeting in Minsk, the Trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine (TCG) made a public statement. In the statement, the TCG indicated that the situation along the boundary line in the conflict area has worsened. The Trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine made an appeal to the parties in the conflict in Donbas to avoid the renewal of military actions and urged them to comply with the conditions of the Minsk agreement.

    On November 17, Special Representative to the Organization for …

  • Sanctions over Ukraine to be extended despite Russian cooperation in Syria

    As reported by The Wall Street Journal, US and EU are prepared to keep pressure on Kremlin and renew their sanctions despite new Russian cooperation in the wake of the Paris attacks.The sanctions are expected to be discussed at EU leaders mid-December summit, and the decision must be backed by all 28 member states.

    Officials say there is a broad agreement that economic pressure should be kept on Russia until the peace is fully implemented. The options discussed are: extending the sanctions …

  • Russian court to overturn international court decisions

    As reported by RIA Novosti, a group of Russian Parliament members has introduced a draft bill that would authorize the Russian Constitutional Court to overturn international court decisions “if they run counter to the provisions of the Russian constitution”.

    The main goal of the proposal was “to safeguard Russian legal sovereignty,” one of the bill's co-sponsors, the Communist party lawmaker Vasily Likhachev, was quoted as saying.

    The bill's authors explicitly mentioned the European Court of …

  • Ukrainian Prime Minister: Russian embargo will cost Ukraine $600 million

    At the Cabinet meeting, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, stated that Ukraine has to get ready for Russian embargo . “We are also getting ready for new import restrictions imposed by Russia to come into effect. Our preliminary estimate for 2016 is that Ukraine will lose $600 millions of export to the Russian Federation" – stated the Prime Minister. Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that three years ago Ukraine was almost 35% dependent on the Russian market, and now the number has been …