EU travel ban against 21 Belarusian officials provoked extravagant behaviour by Belarusian authorities which analysts are still struggling to explain. On 28 February Belarus asked the Polish and EU delegation ambassadors to leave the country. The EU response was...
In Russia's recent elections to the State Duma the ruling United Russia party won. The Russian opposition claims that the authorities falsified the results in favour of Putin's party. Similar to Belarusian authorities, the Kremlin put pressure on independent observers,...
The integration with the European Union is an increasingly articulated priority of Russia’s foreign policy in recent months. Analysts close to the Kremlin frequently stress the complementarity of the economies of Russia and the EU. The draft foreign policy...
On October 16, the Belarusian and Venezuelan rulers had three-hour long talks behind closed doors in Minsk. Lukashenka thanked the Venezuelan leader...
It is hardly a secret that establishing diplomatic relations with an authoritarian state is a gamble. One never knows what one’s embassy in Minsk may suffer if it crosses swords with the Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
The post-Soviet integration and cooperation initiatives have an extremely unsuccessful track record. It seems that the problems persist. Recently, the very idea of Customs Union between Belarus, Russian Federation and Kazakhstan had been questioned, after the government of Belarus...
In the last months Ukraine has significantly increased its importance in the European part of the CIS. The new president Viktor Yanukovych enjoys a honeymoon with Russia: Ukrainian-Russian cooperation has started booming after previous president Viktor Yushchenko had left...
On 26 April 1986, a human error and the Soviet equipment caused the Chernobyl disaster - the largest technological catastrophe ever. For many days Soviet authorities attempted to conceal the scale of the...
A bit of sensational news came today in the morning: starting May, Belarus will daily buy 80,000 barrels of oil from Venezuela. According to media reports, this number is comparable to the current...
Several observers say that the introduction of a common currency should be the next step of the integration of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. The three countries have recently created a customs union and it is logical to assume that...
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s playing Moscow against the West is turning a profit in the midst of global economic crisis. Having received $1.5 billion from Russia and $1.5 billion from the International...
