Belarusian Minister of the Interior Ihar Shunievich announced recently that on July 3, national Independence Day, some 2,600 prisoners are to be released (RIA Novosti, June 12). The statement raised the hopes of some that the remaining political prisoners in Belarus might be on the... MORE

Ukraine, which with Poland co-hosts the Euro 2012 football championship from June 8-July 1, has been lambasted for corruption and racism. Widespread reports have focused on Ukraine spending more than Poland on Euro 2012 even though its GDP per capita is four times smaller and... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Belarus and the nature of the Belarus-Russia relationship continue to be debated. It can certainly be argued that “the Belarusian president is merely forestalling the inevitable, which is deeper integration on terms determined by Russia” (see EDM 31 May).... MORE

On May 22, during the NATO Summit in Chicago, Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Minister Ruslan Kazakbaev and NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow signed an agreement on ground transport routes for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), allowing the country to actively support the complex drawdown of... MORE

On May 31, the Gunvor oil-trading company, 45 percent owned by Gennadiy Timchenko, announced its full acquisition of the Ingolstadt oil refinery in Germany, the top-performing plant of the insolvent Petroplus concern. The acquisition price is not disclosed.Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a working visit... MORE

Several Ukrainian people’s deputies had their faces bruised and their shirts torn in a fistfight in parliament on April 24. The opposition caucuses of Our Ukraine and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc (BYT) provoked the brawl in order to disrupt voting on a controversial... MORE

Today (May 31), Russia’s President Vladimir Putin made the first foreign trip of his new term in office. The visit was to neighboring Belarus to hold talks with his Belarusian counterpart, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, in Minsk. Putin’s choice of Belarus was something of a surprise as... MORE

NATO’s Open Door Policy is as old as the Alliance itself, and remains to date a core principle of the Alliance. Under NATO’s founding treaty, the “Allies may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European state in a position to further the principles of this... MORE

Ukraine’s united opposition, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party and Arseniy Yatseniuk’s Front Zmin (Front for Change), held a congress on May 12 on the symbolic St. Sophia’s Cathedral Square in Kyiv. The congress released a detailed program for the upcoming October parliamentary elections.Boxing champion Vitaliy... MORE

NATO’s summit on May 20 in Chicago has brought Georgia slightly closer to the “open door” of membership in the Alliance. The Chicago summit’s declaration reaffirms earlier decisions, committing NATO to positive consideration of Georgia’s membership aspirations. The Chicago document reads: “At the 2008 Bucharest... MORE