Section: US & Canada
Russian strategy seeks to defy economic decline with military bravado
Russia’s security is severely affected by the Ukraine crisis, and the National Security Strategy gives due attention to this disaster, putting the blame for supporting the “anti-constitutional coup” squarely on the U.S. and the EU, and asserting that Ukraine has become a “long-term source of instability in Europe and on Russia’s...
Odesa, Ukraine’s reform agenda faces crucial test
ODESA, Ukraine – To many of those living or doing business in this otherwise laid-back slice of southern Ukraine, even a whiff of the salty Black Sea breeze can’t mask the smell of corruption. It is a persistent problem that rankles Kyiv and figures prominently in the Ukrainian leadership’s Western-backed push for cleaner government...
More Crimean power shortages likely with end of Ukraine supplies
Residents of Crimea face several more months of power shortages as Russia appears to have ended a contract with Ukraine to deliver electricity to the peninsula it annexed in 2014. A Kremlin spokesman said on January 1 that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not renew the contract, which expired on New Year’s Day, as long […] …read...
Remember Nadiya
As Christmas Eve according to the Julian calendar arrived, Nadiya Savchenko, 34, was on the 20th day of her hunger strike. Her second hunger strike. She is protesting her illegal imprisonment in Russia after her abduction – more than a year and a half ago – from Ukraine by pro-Russian (or should we say Russian) […] …read more Source: The...
January 13, 2006
Ten years ago, on January 13, 2006, the Ukrainian Transport Ministry’s Hydrographic Service entered the lighthouse at Yalta and barred Russian personnel from access to the facility, citing that no lease was signed between Russian and Ukraine regarding the basing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet on the Crimean peninsula. The tensions in Crimea...
Russians, like Ukrainians, now view Ukraine as a separate country, commentator notes
Perhaps the most important development in the post-Soviet space in 2015 is that most Russians and nearly all Ukrainians view Ukraine as a separate country that will never return to Moscow in the fashion of some sort of “prodigal son,” according to Moscow commentator Leonid Radzikhovsky. Writing on January 3, he notes that in 2015 […] …read...
Three ambassadors on investing in Ukraine’s future
“Investing in Ukraine’s Future,” by John E. Herbst, Steven Pifer and William B. Taylor Jr., former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine, The New York Times, December 29, 2015 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/opinion/investing-in-ukraines-future.html?_r=0): …Appropriately funding efforts to improve Ukraine’s stability is a down payment on...
Ukraine-EU Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area
KYIV – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on June 27, 2014, signed the Ukraine-European Union Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area as part of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. It took effect only on January 1 of this year, after being delayed for a year at the request of the Russian government to conduct further consultations, after […]...
Austin Ukrainians decorate trees in blue and yellow
AUSTIN, Texas – On December 5, 2015, Austin Ukrainians took part in the unique Austin Christmas tradition of decorating the cedar trees along Capital of Texas Highway Loop 360. Two trees are now decorated in the colors of Ukraine’s flag. Several Ukrainians from New York City, who had seen the event on Facebook, joined the […] …read...
How to Tell the Difference Between a Nuclear Test and an Earthquake
A sales assistant watches TV sets broadcasting a news report on North Korea’s nuclear test, in Seoul, South Korea. Kim Hong-Ji / ReutersShortly after North Korea claimed it had tested a hydrogen bomb—a weapon potentially hundreds of times more powerful than the fission bombs the country had already set off—seismologists at the United States...
