A memorial to the Lutskevich brothers was installed, on March 13, in downtown Minsk. It consists of a large engraved stone commemorating two houses where, in 1896–1906, Anton and Ivan Lutskevich lived with their families (Tut.by, March 13). Both led the Belarusian national movement and... MORE

Mihai Fifor, the Romanian defense minister, admitted before a joint session of the parliament’s national security and defense committees that the country did not manage to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense in 2017. The government did allocate the necessary funds, but the Ministry... MORE

In late February, Tom Post, editorial advisor at the Finnish and Baltic edition of Forbes, and Arkady Shteimans, referred to as the publisher of Forbes in Latvia, Estonia and Finland, paid a visit to Minsk. In this regard, Dev.by, an online publication about the Belarusian... MORE

Sergei Skripal (66), a former Russian military intelligence (GRU) colonel, was arrested in Moscow in 2004 for allegedly being an agent of the United Kingdom’s MI6 intelligence service. Skripal was convicted, in 2006, to serve 13 years in prison for treason. In 2010, he was... MORE

Four years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it is more than obvious that the peninsula has been forcibly integrated into the contemporary Russian identity. All “achievements” claimed by Moscow since March 2014 are linked to the “reunification” of Crimea with Russia. Precisely because of that,... MORE

Editor’s Note: Miguel Martin has previously published on Arctic affairs under the name Jichang Lulu. Although China’s recent Arctic white paper (SCIO, January 2017), a document primarily intended for foreign consumption, avoids direct mention of Greenland, the island plays an important role in the PRC’s... MORE

The Minsk city administration allowed the opposition-based Organizing Committee (OC) of the centennial celebration of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) (see EDM, January 25) to organize a meeting and a concert downtown, at a square park adjacent to the capital city’s massive opera house. Both... MORE

On February 19, after a decade of investigations, Spanish prosecutors finally launched a major trial against notable members of the Russian mafia operating in the Iberian country. All in all, sufficient evidence was collected against 18 persons (cases, however, were opened against 27 alleged members... MORE

The ataman (head) of the Kuban Cossack voisko (army), Nikolay Doluda, reported that a National Guard platoon made up entirely of Cossacks is being created in Krasnodar Krai. This Cossack National Guard platoon will eventually be scaled up to a company, a battalion or even... MORE

Ukraine’s national oil and natural gas company, Naftogaz Ukrainy, claimed a final victory in a four-year dispute over gas supply and transit with Russia’s Gazprom. The Stockholm arbitration court, where Naftogaz and Gazprom sued each other in 2014, last December obliged Naftogaz to pay much... MORE