Latest Articles about North America
Russian Energy Companies Halt Oil Supplies to Naftan Refinery in Belarus Because of US Sanctions
On June 24, Russia’s state-owned oil transit system operator Transneft announced that hydrocarbon producers Rosneft and Surgutneftgaz had not reserved any pipeline volumes for transporting oil to the Belarusian refinery Naftan for the third quarter of 2021 (TASS, June 24). Transneft’s announcement did not come... MORE
Moscow Says US Waging Biological War Against Russia
Infections and deaths from COVID-19 are again reaching critically high levels in the Russian Federation even as such indicators are mostly declining elsewhere in Western countries, and especially in the United States. Faced with this troubling reality, various Russian commentators and even senior officials have... MORE
Putin’s Penchant for Drawing and Crossing ‘Red Lines’
The summit in Geneva between Presidents Joseph Biden of the United States and Vladimir Putin of Russia was supposed to stabilize bilateral relations by demarcating areas and issues each side deemed so important that any hostile incursion would encounter a strong response. In the present-day... MORE
EU Sectoral Sanctions Put a Heavy Burden on Lukashenka’s Regime
On June 21 and 24, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada imposed several new sanctions packages against Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s regime. The actions form part of a coordinated Western response to the serious human rights abuses observed in Belarus... MORE
Sale of German Aluminum Company to Russia Raises Security Concerns
United States President Joseph Biden’s European meetings with the G7 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) earlier this month highlighted some of the extant policy differences between the US and its allies despite the positive PR assaults that sought to minimize them. One well-known... MORE
Russia Predictably Steps up Attacks on US-European Unity
The post-Geneva changes in Russia’s behavior are not quite going in the direction United States President Joseph Biden had indicated after inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet and deescalate the dangerously high tensions between the two countries. Biden seems to have calculated that the... MORE
Russia’s ‘Green’ Agenda in Action: Economic Tools and Political Motivations (Part One)
On April 19, during the presentation of a report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), United Nations Secretary General António Guterres stated that 2021 would become crucial for fighting climate change. To underscore the seriousness of the problem, he mentioned Verkhoyansk, in Russia’s northern... MORE
Roscosmos Suffers From Russia’s Confrontation With the US
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian state-owned space corporation Roscosmos, confirmed during parliamentary hearings earlier this month that Western sanctions have damaged Russia’s space and orbital activities (Roscosmos.ru, June 7, 2021). Before this statement, Rogozin usually made it a point to deny that the... MORE
Putin’s Satisfaction With Geneva Summit Will Not Last
Expectations regarding the summit between Presidents Joseph Biden and Vladimir Putin in Geneva last Wednesday (June 16) were set quite low (see EDM, June 14, 17), but the media hype was considerable—and both suited the Russian leader just fine. Putin enjoyed being at the center... MORE
Armenian-Azerbaijani Post-War Peace Process on Hold Ahead of Armenia’s Snap Parliamentary Elections
On June 1, 2021, Yerevan announced the suspension of the Armenian-Azerbaijani-Russian working group, which was established during the January 11 trilateral leaders’ summit and tasked with presenting action plans (including implementation schedules) to their governments regarding regional railroad and highway projects (see EDM, January 12). Mher... MORE