The Croatian government offered promises of renewal after the Petrinja earthquake but one year on, its actions have fallen short. BIRN uncovers how Petrinja was abandoned by the state, long before it was hit by an earthquake.The cafe in central Petrinja is crowded and buzzing with Saturday afternoon regulars. Outside …

North Macedonia starts 2022 with a new PM and largely refreshed cabinet that will have no time to spare, as both the government and the country’s stalled EU process are in a precarious, volatile state.It was a tough 2021 for North Macedonia. On top of the ongoing health, economic and …

In 2021 China was, and in 2022 again will be, dominated by the domestic economy, relations with the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic and President Xi Jinping. Despite spectacular bounce-back growth in the first half of the year, China’s economy had slowed dramatically by year’s end. Worries centred on the …

A forum based on Future Minerals is a discerning and defining choice for the region that aligns fully with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 as it transitions from a global leader in energy based on fossil fuels to a global leader in energy based on renewables. The shift to renewable energy …

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his senior aides have repeatedly claimed that Western powers broke promises they made not to expand NATO as the Soviet Union collapsed. In his annual end-of-year press conference in Moscow in December, Putin accused NATO of deceiving Russia by giving assurances in the 1990s that …

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev says troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will begin withdrawing from Kazakhstan in two days as the situation calmed following the deadliest violence in the ex-Soviet republic’s three decades of independence from Moscow. In a televised address to parliament on January 11, Toqaev …

The foreign ministers of Iran and Qatar talked about a range of regional and international issues, including the latest developments in Afghanistan and Yemen. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian held a meeting with his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Doha on Tuesday. The two senior diplomats talked …

Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s former chief ideologist, has published a new programmatic article in which he argues that the solution to Russia’s domestic malaise lies in imperial expansion. Indeed, he says, Russia must expand territorially or die (actualcomment.ru/kuda-delsya-khaos-raspakovka-stabilnosti-2111201336.html). Many Russian commentators have suggested that his analysis of the domestic situation …

Most experts tend to assess the strength of an economy in terms of real gross domestic product (GDP). The GDP framework looks at the value of final goods and services produced during a particular time interval, usually a quarter or a year. The GDP is formed as the summation of …

Russia’s military intervention in Kazakhstan to support the country’s embattled regime was an effort by Moscow to help head off a popular revolt attempting to unseat a friendly autocrat in a neighboring country. And a week after mass protests and subsequent riots first swept Kazakhstan, the Kremlin’s gamble appears to …