Category: Blogs

Life in Luhansk’s War Zone: Old People Search for Water, Cellphone Signal

By Irena Chalupa

Residents Recount Their Struggle to Survive Daily Shells and Gunfire Building by building, daily artillery explosions are blasting and burning Ukraine’s southeastern-most provincial capital, Luhansk, into a ruin whose remaining residents are those too poor or aged to escape. Roughly half of the city’s pre-war population of about 450,000 has fled—to other locales in Ukraine […]

Russia Not Invited to Wales NATO Summit – Reports

Russia will not participate in the upcoming NATO summit in Wales at the beginning of September as it was not invited, Kommersant business daily reported Monday.

Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Crusader Quits Government

By Irena Chalupa

‘No Political Will’ for a ‘Large-Scale War’ Against Graft, Tetiana Chornovol Says Ukraine’s most prominent anti-corruption campaigner, Tetiana Chornovol, has quit her post as head of the government’s National Anti-Corruption Committee, writing on the prominent Ukrainian news website, Ukrainska Pravda, that the government is unprepared for “an uncompromising, large-scale war against corruption.”

Top News: North African Ministers in Cairo for Libya Crisis Talks

By EgyptSource

  Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met early Monday with his Libyan, Algerian, and Tunisian counterparts for talks on the situation in Libya.

Ukraine’s Independence Day: Opposed Observances

By Irena Chalupa

Rebels Parade Prisoners to Declare That Ukraine Is Nazi-Inspired Ukraine’s government marked the country’s twenty-third anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union yesterday with a military parade and a vow by President Petro Poroshenko to sustain Ukraine’s war against Russian-sponsored separatists in the southeast. In Donetsk, the separatists paraded bruised and dirty Ukrainian soldiers, their […]

The Week in Egypt [August 25, 2014]

By Elissa Miller

Catch up on the latest out of Egypt every week, with analysis, news updates, photos, videos, and more.

NATO Debates Directing Missile Shield Against Russia

By Spiegel and RIA Novosti

From Spiegel:  NATO officials are considering deploying a long-planned missile defense system — aimed at protecting Europe from attacks from the Middle East — against Russia as well, SPIEGEL has learned.

‘Zero Problems’ with President Erdoğan: FM Davutoğlu is the new handpicked PM of Turkey

By Pınar Dost-Niyego and Orhan Taner

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has designated Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to be its new leader and the country’s 26th prime minister when current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is inaugurated as president next week. Davutoğlu will become the third prime minister to hail from the ranks of the AKP since it first […]

Can Assad Help With ISIS?

By Frederic C. Hof

With Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel telling a Pentagon press conference that “all options are on the table” regarding air strikes in Syria on the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey saying that ISIS cannot be defeated militarily without addressing its presence in Syria, […]

NATO Warns of Russia Moving Artillery Units and Special Forces Into Ukraine

By NATO and New York Times

From Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO:  I condemn the entry of a Russian so-called humanitarian convoy into Ukrainian territory without the consent of the Ukrainian authorities and without any involvement of the International Committee of the Red Cross.