December 19, 2021 Eurasia
The proposal comes amid the virtual collapse of Russia-NATO ties in recent months, and weeks of claims by the US and its European allies that Moscow may be ‘preparing to invade’ Ukraine. Russian officials and the military have dismissed the claims, accusing the West of artificially ratcheting up tensions and …
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December 17, 2021 Eurasia, South East Asia
It started in 2009; the financial crisis that hit the world a year earlier was storming through the Balkans, and the region was scraping the bottom of the barrel to make ends meet. Enter China. Greece opened its door through the Port of Piraeus, while Serbia declared China the ‘fourth …
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December 17, 2021 Balkans, South East Asia
BIRN’s new interactive map pinpoints China’s growing business presence in the region – which experts say media and civil society need to focus on more. Experts and journalists have warned that Chinese loans and investments in the Balkans lack a desirable level of transparency and say more of a focus …
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December 17, 2021 Eurasia, Romania
Critics say formal military ties between Bucharest and Chisinau would inflame Russia, strain Romania’s military capacities – and require a good deal of political will in both capitals. As Russia-Ukraine tensions continue amid talk of a possible spring invasion of Ukraine, Moldovan ex-defence minister Viorel Cibotaru has proposed an extended …
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December 17, 2021 Balkans
Kosovo is trying to reintegrate returnees from the Islamic State. But its strategy on religious extremism must evolve too, experts say. In the backyard of a house in the southern Kosovo city of Prizren, a four-year-old girl sits with a smartphone listening to Ilahi, a form of Islamic song. The …
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December 17, 2021 Eurasia, India
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India in the first week of December. The visit was significant in part because Putin has not traveled abroad to attend recent summits in person, like the G-20 in late October in Rome and COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November. Putin did go, however, to …
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December 17, 2021 Eurasia
Saule Omarova, the proud Komsomol who wrote about Karl Marx on a Lenin scholarship, has withdrawn her nomination and will not be the next comptroller of the currency in the Treasury Department. The Moscow State alum, once arrested for theft, aimed to replicate Soviet banking in America. Senator Tim Scott …
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December 17, 2021 Eurasia, South East Asia
China is exploring the possibility of building its first military base on the Atlantic ocean, according to classified intelligence reports viewed by the Wall Street Journal. The proposed host for the military base is Equatorial Guinea, a small central African country of approximately 1.4 million people. Politically, Equatorial Guinea is …
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December 17, 2021 Eurasia, South East Asia
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met Wednesday via video conference, stressing their strong alliance amid both countries’ deteriorating relations with the west. “A new model of cooperation has been formed between our countries, based, among other things, on such principles as non-interference in internal affairs, …
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December 17, 2021 Balkans, Eurasia
We ought not to consider The Balkans a region completely immune from potential crises and conflicts. The symptoms of this assumption are clearly visible in the current political situation in Bosnia, which is risking to enter into a new conflict with unforeseeable consequences, even 25 years after the Dayton Peace …
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