Latest Articles about Europe
Coal Smuggled From Ukraine’s Occupied Donbas Ends up in Poland
While Ukraine’s power plants are short of fuel, coal from the unrecognized Luhansk “people’s republic,” located in the Moscow-proxy-controlled eastern part of Donbas, has been smuggled to Poland, journalists from the Polish newspaper Dziennik have found. Doncoaltrade, a firm linked to Oleksandr Melnychuk, a former... MORE
The Favored Conflicts of Foreign Fighters From Central Europe
Relatively few jihadist fighters have originated from Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) by comparison to the number of fighters seen from Western Europe. The networks in Western Europe are far larger, and CEEC jihadists have frequently only embarked on their path to violence after... MORE
Zapad 2017: Myth and Reality
The joint Belarusian-Russian strategic military exercise Zapad 2017 may have generated more international interest than any previous Russian exercise since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The context included the marked deterioration of Russian relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) caused by Moscow’s... MORE
Zapad 2017: Lessons Learned by Russia and Implications for NATO
The week-long Russian-Belarussian strategic military exercise Zapad 2017 attracted close attention in Ukraine and the member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But this topic did not simply disappear after the formal end of the exercises on September 20; experts and analysts are... MORE
What Are the Limits to Belarus’s Sovereignty?
The joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad 2017 war games, which ran during September 14–20, inspired a wide-ranging debate about the nature and geopolitical realities of Belarusian statehood and independence. Thus, according to the Belarusian military analyst Alexander Alesin, the Kremlin had evinced utmost irritation with Minsk because,... MORE
Russia Raising Taxes on Gasoline and Cellular Network Services to Fund Development Projects in Crimea, Kaliningrad and Far East
The Russian government recently announced a hike in excise duties on gasoline. The overall retail price will increase by more than a ruble per liter (6.5¢/gallon), or by around 2.5 percent of its current market price, by the end of the next year (Ekho Moskvy,... MORE
Zapad 2017: A Test for the West
The joint strategic Russian-Belarusian military exercise Zapad 2017 (“West” 2017), which took place on September 14–20, is worth studying in detail because of what it reveals about Moscow’s likely military operations in the westward direction in the event of a regional crisis. At the same... MORE
Russian Trace in the Catalonian Referendum: Is a ‘Spanish Spring’ Possible?
The Spanish region of Catalonia held a referendum on self-determination yesterday (October 1), which was forcefully contested by the central government in Madrid and resulted in hundreds injured in skirmishes with police in Barcelona. But events leading up to the controversial vote appear to have... MORE
Georgian Opposition Attacks Bank of Billionaire Ivanishvili
The party of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, United National Movement (UNM), has begun actively preparing for local elections, scheduled for October 21. Its first major action, which caused a big response, was a rally in downtown Tbilisi, at the central office of Cartu Bank,... MORE
Belarus Shows Three Important Signs of Change
Nothing is eternal under the moon. Indeed, Belarusian attitudes toward Russia, the country’s meaningful other, are visibly shifting. Similarly, international opinions of Belarus’s national leader are currently exhibiting signs of change. Even the Belarusian opposition is now undergoing a transformation of sorts. Russia’s commanding position... MORE