December, 2022

• 23 December

  Illegal Builder in Albania’s capital Linked to Ruling Party

  

  Government’s claim to be leading crackdown on illegal builds hides an important fact – that such violators are often well connected to the ruling Socialist Party. rampant illegal construction, including in Tirana city centre, accusing his critics of being potentially corrupt themselves. “You that blindly raise allegations might have thousands …

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• 23 December

  In Defence of the EU Veto

  

  The war and Schengen enlargement have put unanimity voting in the Council of the EU to the test. But the opportunity to veto is an important guarantee of the rule of law, as it prevents the EU from turning into a federal state against the will of its members. Whenever …

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• 23 December

  Montenegro: New Prosecutor Makes Minimal Progress in Wartime Probes

  

  In 2022, the Montenegrin authorities started investigating a retired Yugoslav navy officer and put a Bosnian Serb Army ex-soldier on trial, but there were few other signs of progress towards dealing with the country’s wartime past. During the past few months, Montenegro’s new state prosecutor Vladmir Novovic has made minor …

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• 23 December

  Putin’s Last Stand

  

  The Promise and Peril of Russian Defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine was meant to be his crowning achievement, a demonstration of how far Russia had come since the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991. Annexing Ukraine was supposed to be a first step in reconstructing a …

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• 23 December

  Security Council condemns terrorist attacks in Iraq

  

  The UN Security Council has condemned terrorist attacks in Iraq that have left 17 dead amid a surge in violence in the country. ISIS terrorists killed nine federal police officers in an ambush on Sunday in Iraq’s northern Kirkuk province. A day later, extremists on motorbikes killed eight civilians in …

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• 23 December

  Open Secrets

  

  Ukraine and the Next Intelligence Revolution Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a watershed moment for the world of intelligence. For weeks before the shelling began, Washington publicly released a relentless stream of remarkably detailed findings about everything from Russian troop movements to false-flag attacks the Kremlin would use to …

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• 23 December

  Is Kyiv Trying To Incite A Direct NATO-Russia War? – Analysis

  

  After a Ukrainian air defence missile crashed in the village of Przewodów in eastern Poland’s Lublin Voivodeship close to the border with Ukraine last month, killing two people, the Russian Ambassador to the United States (US) had accused Kyiv of not only soliciting greater military assistance from Washington but also attempting to …

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• 23 December

  Dugin’s Plan To De-Modernize Russia Would Lead To Country’s Death – OpEd

  

  Aleksandr Dugin’s call to solve Russia’s demograpahic problems by radically de-modernizing the country (t.me/rusbrief/77092) would be its death, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name “El Murid” says because “there is not a single example of de-modernizing without the total destruction of the social order.” And the words of …

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• 23 December

  Preparing For The Final Collapse Of The Soviet Union – Analysis

  

  The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the start of the USSR’s collapse—but not the collapse itself. While the USSR ceased to exist as a legal entity after 1991, the collapse of the USSR …

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• 23 December

  Article 5 For The Next Decade Of NATO – Analysis

  

  Collective defense is at the heart of European security. Enshrined within Article 5 of its founding treaty, NATO allies see “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” Written over seventy years ago with the threat of …

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