Section: News & Summaries
US delivers artillery-locating radars to Ukraine
US delivers artillery-locating radar to Ukraine. Can locate artillery, rocket and mortar attacks. pic.twitter.com/RY8Wjb2jFL — Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) November 15, 2015 Ukrainian armed forces receive advanced radar systems from the U.S. capable of stopping rocket and artillery attacks, states Reuters. “The U.S. is handing over two...
The Economics of Rebellion in Eastern Ukraine
New research demonstrates why the conflict has not spread beyond Donetsk and Luhansk In April 2014, angry mobs and armed men stormed administrative buildings and police stations in eastern Ukraine, waving Russian flags and proclaiming the establishment of “Peoples’ Republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk. At the time, some observers...
Winning Energy Battle Just as Important as Fight in Eastern Ukraine
The West has focused on Ukraine’s two existential crises: the war in the east and Ukraine’s troubled economy. It’s understandable, but now is the time for Ukraine to press hard on energy reform because Russia uses energy to exert influence over Ukraine and the energy sector has been a black hole of corruption in the country.Gas...
Slowly But Surely Kyiv Comes Around
How has Ukraine changed since the Euromaidan Revolution?In attempting to answer this question, I’ve used the governance-related categories in Freedom House’s Nations in Transit study, which tracks the reform record of post-Communist countries in Europe and Eurasia, and supplemented them with a few of my own. (Full disclosure:...
The mafia of the digital age
Through the dark world of cybercrime, its tentacles spread everywhere: stock manipulation, money laundering, gambling and more. ||| New York – Through the dark world of cybercrime, its tentacles spread everywhere: stock manipulation, money laundering, gambling and more.Nothing in the annals of corporate hacking compares to the portrait US...
Key hacker MIA in US case
A key figure is missing in the court documents outlining the biggest computer attack ever of the US financial system: the actual hacker. ||| Washington – A key figure is missing in the court documents outlining the biggest computer attack ever of the US financial system: the actual hacker. The Israeli mastermind of the crime syndicate with...
Will Saakashvili’s Defeat in Odesa Be His Ukrainian Waterloo?
Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov trounced Solidarity Party’s Sasha Borovik by 53-26 percent in Ukraine’s local elections October 25. Observers reported carousel voting, multiple voting lists, exit poll workers agitating for candidates, and a suspiciously slow vote count.The race for Odesa mayor was a proxy war between Oblast Governor...
A Close (and Surprisingly Positive) Encounter with Odesa’s New Police
The reorganization and reform of Ukraine’s catastrophically corrupt police force was the top priority when President Petro Poroshenko appointed Eka Zguladze first deputy Interior Minister of Ukraine. Poroshenko wants to emulate the relative success that Georgia’s Rose Revolution reformers garnered in modernizing their small...
Failing on the Ukrainian Battlefield, Russia Turns to Terrorism
To understand how Russia conducts its foreign policy, simply look at what the Kremlin accuses everyone else of doing. Unlike the Soviet Union, which operated under a coherent ideology, the Russian government under President Vladimir Putin seems to believe that everybody is a cynical power player, and that the West is simply hypocritical about it....
Judiciary Reforms Take a Major Step Forward in Ukraine
While Ukraine’s eastern front falls quiet, a different campaign rages in the conference rooms of Kyiv. The administration of President Petro Poroshenko is overhauling the Ukrainian state, amending everything from the constitution to the tax code. The most important reform may be the creation of an independent judiciary. As Anders Åslund...