In the past several months, the world has been gripped by the graphic political drama unfolding in Ukraine, but events have often unfolded so fast that it has been difficult to put them in context. And although the violence has stopped, the future of Ukraine is more uncertain than ever before. Here we’ll break down […]
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that more crude oil is being sent by sea and inland waterways as a supplement to railways and pipelines. Since 2010, the amount of oil shipped on barges from the Midwest down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico has increased 13 times. Much of this […]
After less than half an hour of joint session talks on Saturday, February 15, the second round of the Geneva II conference on Syria has abruptly ended. In a press conference shortly after, joint United Nations-Arab League negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi apologized to the Syrian people for the almost complete failure of the negotiations, “I am […]
As the 2014 winter games kick off, this is what you should be reading.
A hum of activity pulls two cities together. In one, the shuffle of feet and the rush of cars compose the soundtrack to a morning rush hour. In the other we hear the excited bustling of a town nearing the end of long preparations for a shining, global sporting event. From afar, the buzz that […]
At the end of each year I tried to reflect on the most important events that took place in Europe (see my comments for 2011 and 2012). Aside from the political look down in DC, tensions in South-East Asia, instabilities in the Middle East and North Africa, among many other stories, seven stories caught my attention […]
The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long‘s rescue of the passengers aboard the stranded Russian research vessel MV Akademik Shokalskiy has made headlines around the world. Since December 24, the Russian ship has been stuck in pack ice near Antarctica’s Cape de la Motte, approximately 1,700 miles south of Tasmania. MV Akademik Shokalskiy was about midway through the month-long Australasian Antarctic Expedition, run by the University of New […]
“We do not give up the North Pole. Canada’s claims to the North Pole are no more than ambition.” So declared Russian polar explorer and scientist Artur Chilingarov on December 11, whom President Vladimir Putin named a “Hero of Russia” after he famously planted his country’s flag on the seabed underneath the North Pole in 2007. […]
A Lack of Credible Opposition Candidates Has Stalled Democratic Progress Along the Black Sea Since late November, ever since Ukraine’s President, Victor Yanukovych, refused to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union, protestors have congregated in downtown Kiev, defying what they see as a blatant attempt to maintain a post-Soviet world order in a […]
Over the years, political journalism in Russia has gradually morphed into a new definition – one that blurs the line between politicized and honest journalism. Russian journalism blotched that line even more with Monday’s presidential decree to shut down the state-funded news agency, RIA Novosti, and merged it with a news outlet called Russia Today. […]
The European Union should provide Ukraine with the trade benefits it would have realized had Russian pressure not prompted the government of President Viktor Yanukovych to announce on November 21 that it would not sign a long-anticipated Association Agreement with the EU. That announcement set off not only pro-EU protests in the streets of […]
The Olympic torch for the upcoming Winter Games in Sochi, Russia has made quite the journey so far. It’s only a little over a month into its 123-day, 65,000 kilometer relay, but already, the torch has made it to the frigid north and even outer space. This past week, cosmonauts carried the torch during the […]
Oil and gas. Uranium and rare earth metals. Cod and shrimp. Reindeer and seal pelts. These things constitute the bulk of discussions about Arctic resources, yet there’s one resource that’s overlooked: time. At the Arctic Circle summit in Reykjavik earlier in October, economist and Sami reindeer herder Anders Johansen Eira gave a talk, “The Challenges of […]
The European Union (EU) is approaching a major milestone in its relations with Ukraine. Next month, the most valuable state in eastern Europe that remains a non-member will have the opportunity to expand its relations with the West by signing an Association Agreement with the EU. Once signed, the agreement will provide a new framework […]
On Tuesday, after 22 days at sea, the first-ever South Korean pilot service of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) reached its destination in Gwangyang, South Korea. Korean shipping line Hyundai Glovis chartered a Swedish oil tanker to carry 44,000 tons of naphtha, a light derivative of crude oil, from the Russian port of Ust-Luga, 110 kilometers […]