Ukraine has placed 15-year Eurobonds in the amount of $3 billion, President Petro Poroshenko announced on September 18. Poroshenko, who was on a visit to New York at the time for the United Nations General Assembly, noted that Ukraine had never borrowed so much for... MORE

In the first half of 2017, Belarus’s economy finally overcame its 2.5-year-long downward trend (EurasiaExpert, August 31). Thus, Belarus’s gross domestic product (GDP) has increased 1 percent compared with the first half of 2016. Industrial output increased 6.1 percent and retail sales—0.7 percent. In the... MORE

Recent reports confirm that Turkey has agreed to purchase the S-400 Triumph Russian air and missile defense system (TRT World, August 23). Under the deal, worth $2.5 billion, Turkey will receive two S-400 batteries (Hurriyet Daily News, July 17). The system is advertised as being... MORE

The recent involvement of the Russian Federal Security Service’s (FSB) cryptography specialists in international efforts to instrumentalize emerging currencies such as Bitcoin and Ether (Iso.org, accessed September 11) shows how profoundly the official Russian position on cyber technology has shifted in the past year. It... MORE

After a break prompted by war and economic collapse in 2014–2015, Ukraine restarted its privatization campaign in August 2017. The local privatization body, the State Property Fund (SPF), sold only five out of the state’s eight 25 percent stakes in the regional power-supply and generation... MORE

Not only beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In the absence of attention-grabbing cataclysms, the most talked about issue related to Belarus depends on who you ask. Thus, ordinary Belarusians are mostly preoccupied with price hikes, the cost of utilities in particular, and... MORE

After illegally annexing Crimea in 2014, Russia declared it would build a 12-mile-long road-and-rail bridge across the Kerch Strait, connecting mainland Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula. And last year (2016), with construction underway, Moscow officials promised that the building of this massive bridge would... MORE

Belarus hosted a joint counter-terrorism exercise with China called United Shield 2017, on July 11–18 (Belta, July 18). It took place at a training field bear Barysau and brought together a rapid response unit of the Interior Troops of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs... MORE

While the world's attention focuses on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) connecting China with Eurasia and Africa, China is also making major investments in the Caribbean. In September 2016 the China Harbor Engineering Company (中国港湾工程有限责任公司) agreed to build a mega-port in Jamaica that would... MORE

For about a decade, the Arctic has been a showpiece of Russian policy. And with the Vladimir Putin regime’s displayed proclivity for engaging in vast “mega-projects” like the Sochi Olympics, the Arctic had been in a class of its own as a multi-year economic and... MORE