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UkraineAlert

Mar 3, 2015

Europe Averts Winter Gas Cutoff for Now with Ukraine-Russia Deal

By New Atlanticist

For Long-Term Security, EU Should Push Moscow to Obey Rules and Kyiv to Reform Gas Sector By brokering a March 2 interim gas deal between Ukraine and Russia, the European Union helped avert a wintertime cutoff of gas to Ukraine and other parts of Europe. Russia had threatened to halt supplies to Ukraine in the […]

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

New Atlanticist

Mar 3, 2015

As NATO Seeks a Response to Russia, Is It Getting Enough Exercise?

By New Atlanticist

Raw Numbers on Military Drills Suggest a Gap in the West’s Deterrence Readers who don’t specialize in NATO or military affairs may have missed a report from the NATOSource blog last week on a wide gap between the scale of military exercises conducted by Russia and by the NATO alliance. In the past two years, […]

UkraineAlert

Mar 3, 2015

To Secure Europe’s Energy, Build a Market and Integrate Ukraine

By Basil Kalymon and Adonis Yatchew

Europe Should Press Moscow to Respect EU Rules—and Kyiv to End Gas Monopoly In recent days, Russia has once more threatened the security of Europe’s gas supplies by announcing that it will refuse to pipe gas through Ukraine and will require that a southern alternative be built through Turkey. The European gas supply system has […]

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance
Norwegian Defense Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide and Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Feb. 4, 2015

NATOSource

Mar 2, 2015

Norwegian Defense Minister: NATO Decision Making Process Too Slow To Deal with Emerging Crises

By Mick Krever, CNN

Western relations with Russia will never again be the same after the war in Ukraine, Norwegian Defense Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.

NATO Northern Europe

UkraineAlert

Mar 2, 2015

Is the IMF Bailout Enough for Ukraine?

By Ashish Kumar Sen

MIT Economist Says Rescue Plan Is Too Small, May Need Adjustment An International Monetary Fund bailout for Ukraine underestimates the banking sector’s needs and is unrealistic about government expenditure on security and defense, according to Andrei Kirilenko, a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ukraine has secured a $40 billion bailout from the IMF […]

Ukraine

MENASource

Mar 2, 2015

Top News: Egypt’s March Parliamentary Elections on Hold

By EgyptSource

Egypt’s parliamentary elections are on hold until further review of a ruling on the unconstitutionality of a law defining voter constituencies, the spokesman for the Higher Electoral Commision (HEC) said on Sunday. The Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) ruled earlier in the day that Article 3 the Constituencies Law issued by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was “unconstitutional,” […]

MENASource

Mar 2, 2015

EconSource: Egypt receives $23 billion in aid from Gulf in eighteen months

By EconSource

Egypt has obtained $23 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait in the last eighteen months since Islamist President Mohamed Morsi was ousted, Investment Minister Ashraf Salman said on Monday. Speaking at a business conference in Dubai, Salman said the aid included oil shipments, cash grants and deposits in Egypt’s […]

MENASource

Mar 2, 2015

Is ISIS Still “Remaining and Expanding”?

By Jeppe Sorensen

Kurdish forces in late January expelled fighters from the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIS) from Kobani in northern Syria. They later retook villages surrounding the city, reportedly without much fighting. With the radical organization’s losses mounting, observers of the Syrian conflict should ask the question: “What is next for ISIS?”

Syria

UkraineAlert

Mar 1, 2015

Nemtsov Assassination Is Rooted in Putin’s Authoritarianism

By John E. Herbst

Passive Responses to Putin Darken the Future for Ukraine—and for Russia The professional killing of Boris Nemtsov February 27 confronts us with two facts that Western policymakers ignore at great cost in the Russia-Ukraine war. First, Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine is potentially a great domestic political liability for him. Second, it is central to […]

Russia Ukraine

MENASource

Feb 28, 2015

The Egyptian Parliament: A Presidential Right to Dissolution

By Yussef Auf

With the many legal challenges facing Egypt’s coming parliament, even if it is not dissolved by a ruling of the Supreme Constitutional Court, it may still be dissolved by the president. The political system in Egypt’s Constitution is a distorted one, based on the consolidation of the powers of the president at the expense of […]

Elections North Africa