NATO

According to Tacciana Manionak, an independent energy expert, the Lukashenka regime will get $2.2bn in subsidies from Russia thanks to discounted natural gas prices in 2012 and at least $700m thanks to the refinement of Russian crude oil. Independent economic expert Leanid Zaika estimates the volume of Russian oil and gas subsidies in 2012 at about $ 4bn.  Russia was guided by political...

Last week, President Lukashenka approved an agreement with Russia to establish the Single Regional System of Air Defence. The defence ministers of the two nations already signed the controversial treaty three years ago. Russian and Belarusian presidents will jointly  appoint the commander of the air defence system. This effectively means that a portion of the Belarusian armed forces...

If one listens to the Belarusian and Russian leadership, a war with the West is imminent. This weekend, the Belarusian internet was filled with stories about Moscow being ready to defend Belarus from Warsaw's claims to the Grodno and Minsk regions in Poland. In November 2011, Head of the Russian General Staff General Nikolai Makarov presented an alarmist ...

The concerns in the West are not just about the size the Russian-Belarusian exercise, but by the fact that foreign observers hadn’t been invited to observe them. NATO spokesperson James Appathurai notes that the military exercise Zapad...

Poland’s foreign minister called upon the US to deploy its troops on the territory of the country to defend it from military aggression.

During a conference in Washington...

On Sept. 17, to Russia’s satisfaction and to Poland’s chagrin, President Obama announced canceling US plans to build a missile base in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic. The revelation came on the 70th...