China has preliminarily agreed to lend more than $7 billion to Ukraine. In addition, an agreement has been signed between the two countries’ central banks on a currency swap worth $2.4 billion. Although it is likely to take months of talks to agree on the... MORE

Twenty years ago, on July 21, 1992, the Russian 14th Army’s intervention in the Transnistria conflict forced Moldova to accept the deployment of Russian “peacekeeping” units. Six days later (July 28), the first of those units was air-lifted from Russia’s interior to Moldova, on both... MORE

In late June, President of Belarus Alyaksandr Lukashenka visited Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador. He signed over 20 accords with the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, renewed acquaintances with Raul Castro in Cuba and started a new relationship with Rafael Correa, the President of Ecuador. The... MORE

Lidiya Yermoshina, chair of the Belarus Central Electoral Commission, long on the EU travel ban list, was invited to the Vienna-based July 12 OSCE conference “Democratic Elections and Election Observation.” Her deputy, Nikolay Lozovik, also under EU travel sanctions, was invited as well, and both... MORE

Moldova’s parliament initially banned the Communist Party and confiscated all its assets in August 1991, when the pro-Soviet putsch failed in Russia while Moldova proclaimed its independence. The banned party was the local branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The next... MORE

Twenty-one years after the Soviet Union’s demise and Moldova’s proclamation of independence, the Moldovan parliament has at last repudiated Communism, albeit by a narrow margin. The Communist Party retains a broad base of support in the country. For the last 15 years, Moldova has held... MORE

After failing to persuade Russia to change the current gas contract, Ukraine is threatening to break it. The state-owned oil and gas company Naftohaz Ukrainy will cut Russian gas imports from the 40 billion cubic meters (bcm) bought last year to 27 bcm this year,... MORE

On July 2 in Kyiv, Naftohaz Ukrainy and Ferrostaal Industrieanlagen signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for a pilot project to upgrade Ukraine’s gas transit system. That system carries more than 70 percent of Russia’s gas exports to Europe at present. Germany’s powerful lobby for... MORE

On June 27-29 in Brussels, Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat wrapped up four agreements between Moldova and the European Union, advancing his country’s European integration process. Filat led a governmental delegation to the high-level annual meeting of the EU-Moldova Cooperation Council. The sectoral agreements just... MORE

Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed a decree on June 18, which announced that the 2012 elections to the House of Representatives (HR or Parliament) would be held on September 23. Elections for the upper house of the National Assembly, the Council of the Republic (64... MORE