Ukraine’s top businessmen are answering President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call to assist and even lead the country’s efforts to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic. Zelenskyy had summoned Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen for an emergency meeting on March 16 in the presidential building to consider a coordinated... MORE

COVID-19 has now started to spread to Russia’s North Caucasus republics, and regional authorities have been scrambling to mobilize scant resources to stave off the pandemic. As of March 30, officials confirmed infections in Adygea, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, as well as Krasnodar and Stavropol regions. The... MORE

In mid-March, the Russian media was celebrating the fact that air service had been restored to a part of rural Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, a federal subject in the Russian Far East, that had not seen any civilian planes for 25 years. Since then, however, many... MORE

The chief surgeon of the main Russian coronavirus medical facility on the outskirts of Moscow, in Kommunarka, Denis Protsenko (44), has contracted COVID-19 and is in seclusion within his own facility (RIA Novosti, March 31). On March 24, Protsenko was in close contact with President... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has come under growing public pressure and international criticism for not undertaking the types of pervasive quarantine and mobility restriction policies to limit the spread of COVID-19 that had become de rigueur across most of the West. On March 27, the Belarusian... MORE