Luis Alcaide | Early morning of 26 February 2022. Invasion of Russian troops. I don’t know whether I’m in Madrid or in the Bucharest of that morning on 21 August 1968. At that time, 170,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers were invading Czechoslovakia, and the Prague Spring was a political and economic threat to the communist bloc. Czechoslovakia, which was a developed pre-World War II society and economy, offered in 1968 economic…
J.P. Marín-Arrese | Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, the US has shown utter disdain for Russia. It flouted the pledge made to Gorbatchev to keep former Warsaw Pact countries out of NATO so that Russia could have a security buffer zone along its frontiers. It openly invited the Ukrainian government to disregard the Minsk agreement, which was brokered to ensure that Ukraine would remain neutral. John Kerry, the former…
Ivan Dikov (European Views) | Take a fun look at a wonderful display of the “strong men” frenemy macho state leaders that dominate the world of today in what might be its last decades.
America’s interests — not to mention image — took a major hit in Helsinki during the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is more than sufficient to provoke America’s concern about the direction Donald Trump is taking the country.
Vladimir Putin secured an easy victory, and a second consecutive six-year term, in yesterday’s first round of presidential elections. With 99% of the votes counted, he has received 77% of votes, which will extend his 18-year in power until 2024. Putin’s re-election means stability in the corporate sector, a favourable outcome for bond investors.
For the moment, Russia considers what’s happening in Catalonia as an internal issue and the country’s television channels are focusing on the violence in the region, without getting to the political issue itself. For the time being. Except if the problem stops being a domestic one and – for whatever reason- becomes an international one.
Xavier Colás (Moscow) | Although NATO is an alliance based on the sum of military power, emotions count for something in the day by day of the organisation. For the Russian president, NATO is another of the US’ foreign policy tools, where there are no allies “but just vassal states”.
Xavier Colás | Russia is hoping that in 2017 its economic indicators will look brighter again after three years of questions over the country’s economic health due to sanctions, rock-bottom oil prices and a rouble which has lost half of its value.
Jens Bastian via Macropolis | As various countries in the European Union prepare for watershed elections in the course of 2017, analysts at www.macropolis.gr will be discussing the implications of these elections and the issues most likely to impact the electoral agendas. We start off with a look at Germany and its strong bilateral (economic) ties with Russia.
Bungling with Russia over Crimea will send the West knocked out with a bloody nose. One way or another, it was a crisis a long time coming. Europe has arguably sleepwalked into a reluctant confrontation with Russia. The continent’s next-door behemoth of a neighbor, saddled by a man it secretly detests the most, is also its largest energy supplier, irascible trading partner and purveyor of most maladies diplomatic.