Section: Latest news
US wants to mend ties: Russia
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States has been sending “signals” that it wants to start mending ties with Moscow. ||| Moscow – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday the United States has been sending “signals” that it wants to start mending ties with Moscow, badly strained over the past year and a...
Ukraine Has Every Right to Play Hardball With Its Creditors
As Ukraine fights Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas, the government is simultaneously engaged in a battle with its foreign creditors for the debt relief it desperately needs to prevent a full-scale economic collapse. Ukraine owes $32 billion in foreign currency Eurobonds.To stave off disaster, the International Monetary Fund and other...
Terrorists fired at Ukrainians’ positions from artillery, mortars,grenade launchers 78 times – the ATO Press Center
On August 23, 2015, the ATO Press Center reports that during the last night (August 22, 2015), the situation in the ATO zone remained relatively calm. Russian militants minimized the use of 100mm (and higher) mortars and artillery. At the same time, illegal armed groups mainly used small arms to provoke Ukrainian soldiers. “Though isolated...
Ukraine Steps Up Efforts to Recover Stolen Assets Abroad
Two Kyiv-based women—a lawyer who heads a state agency created to reclaim stolen assets abroad and a social activist-turned-politician who’s made a career out of exposing official corruption—spoke August 20 in Washington about their efforts to clean up Ukraine.Olena Tyshchenko is director of the Agency for Asset Recovery at Ukraine’s...
Russia, Not Ukraine, is the Questionable Partner
In its August 12 editorial, “Shaky Ukraine: Economics and Corruption Complicate Its War,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette calls Ukraine a “questionable partner” because of “resistance to economic reform and use of Islamist Chechen forces.” Too bad neither charge is true. …read more Source: Atlantic...
Tax bill bankrupts Santa
Finland’s Santa Claus Office has been declared bankrupt over unpaid taxes after a sharp drop in visits from recession-hit Russians. ||| Helsinki – Finland’s Santa Claus Office has been declared bankrupt over unpaid taxes after a sharp drop in visits from recession-hit Russians, once the centre’s best customers. But...
Russia jails Estonian ‘spy’
An Estonian police officer who says Russia abducted him in a cross-border raid was sentenced to 15 years hard labour for espionage. ||| Moscow/Tallinn – An Estonian police officer who says Russia abducted him in a cross-border raid was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday, stoking tensions between Moscow and the former Soviet...
The Soviet Playbook in Ukraine
It appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing the war in Ukraine. Gone are the talks about seizing so-called Novorossiya—the strip of land from Kharkiv to Odesa—and establishing a land bridge to occupied Crimea. Even though recent developments suggest a possible offensive to expand the territory Russia and its proxies now hold,...
Queen shows no sign of stepping aside
Those close to Queen Elizabeth say the 89-year-old has no intention of succumbing to the European fashion for abdication. ||| London – After 63 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth next month becomes Britain’s longest-ruling monarch but there is little prospect of her stepping aside, as other ageing European crowned heads have done,...
Diplomatic scandal: drunk German Diplomat shouted at policemen in Kyiv
The German Embassy in Ukraine checks information on the possible involvement of the employee in conflict with police in Kyiv, Ukraine. This is stated in a message on the page Embassy in Facebook. “Currently German Embassy could not confirm the incident, we check the facts. In general, the employee of the German Embassy and staff are...