Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis announced new amendments to the set of education laws regulating the transition of all secondary education (high school) within the country into the official state language—Latvian. The system of bilingual high school education is thus set to end by 2022 (Diena.lv,... MORE

On February 6 and March 15, the European Investment Bank (EIB) allocated loan packages of €1.5 billion ($1.8 billion) and €932 million ($1.14 billion) to complete the construction of the Southern Gas Corridor’s (SGC) two main segments, which will carry Caspian-basin natural gas from Azerbaijan... MORE

Because oil and natural gas are Russia’s largest exports (Gks.ru, accessed April 3), it is entirely understandable that Moscow’s efforts to build pipelines to the West bypassing the three Baltic States and Ukraine continue to attract a great deal of attention. But much less attention... MORE

On March 25, the celebration of the centennial of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) (see EDM, January 25), which opposition-minded Belarusians have long christened “Freedom Day,” proceeded as planned. An emotional meeting and a concert took place in the park square attached to the Minsk... MORE

Moscow announced last week (March 29) that 60 American diplomats would be expelled, delivering a “mirror” response to every Western country that had sanctioned Russia in solidarity with the United Kingdom (see EDM, March 29). What appeared to be a tit-for-tat response in a diplomatic... MORE

The strong demonstration of Western solidarity with the United Kingdom in response to the March 4 poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England, by a nerve agent known as “Novichok,” secretly developed in the Soviet Union, has apparently caught... MORE

Three Belarusian opposition activists, including 2010 presidential hopeful Vladimir Neklyaev, were preventively arrested in Minsk, on March 21, while walking on the street. At least one of them received a ten-day sentence (Sputnik.by, March 22). All three—Neklayev, Vyacheslav Siuchyk and Maxim Vinyarsky, were members of... MORE

Vasyl Hyrtsak, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), announced, on March 9, that a prominent public figure, in collusion with the Moscow-backed leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), part of the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas, had been systematically transporting weapons... MORE

The Verkhovna Rada’s (Ukrainian parliament) committee charged with national security and defense delayed the progress, on March 19, of Draft Law 8068 “On National Security”  (Rada.gov.ua, accessed March 21), which had been submitted to the legislature by President Petro Poroshenko on February 28.  The Rada... MORE

Prime Minister Theresa May issued a statement, on March 14, that the United Kingdom was evaluating other natural gas import options to decrease her country’s dependence on gas imports from Russia. The UK prime minister’s assurance came as a response to a comment made by... MORE