Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin signed a joint actions plan for 2013-2015, the Kazakh presidential press-service reported.

• December 20, 2012

ISSUE #49
12/18/2012
On 13 December 2012, the European Parliament issued a resolution calling on the Ukrainian authorities to respect and implement the final rulings of the European Court of Human Rights on the cases of Yuliya Tymoshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko. It also said Ukraine needed to reform its judiciary and improve its electoral legislation. READ MORE

• December 19, 2012

Gazprom wants its two major projects – South Stream and Nord Stream – to be granted exceptions from the EU third energy package, seeking to retain control over their transportation capacity. A new version of an agreement on transnational energy transportation projects will be handed over to the  European Commission on Friday during a Russia-EU summit on energy issues, Russia’s Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said on Monday. The agreement should regulate South Stream and Nord Stream projects instead of the third energy package which is criticized in Russia.

• December 18, 2012

Georgia says it will move to formally ask Russian peacekeepers to leave the breakaway region of Abkhazia following reports that they seized and beat five Georgian police officers.

• December 17, 2012

U.S. President Barack Obama has signed into law legislation that grants permanent normal trade relations to Russia and Moldova while also paving the way for sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

• December 17, 2012

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has given an interview to Interfax and Novaya Gazeta newspaper in the wake of a ministerial meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels in which he speaks about the results of the NRC meeting, prospects of NATO-Russia relations and the most pressing issues on the international agenda.

• December 15, 2012

Ahead of next week's EU-Russia Summit, where a new partnership and cooperation agreement could be signed, EU members, including Latvia, must understand that Russia is nowhere near fulfilling the obligations it undertook when joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as obligations in other agreements signed between the EU and Russia, European Parliament Member Roberts Zile believes, informs LETA.

• December 14, 2012

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has apparently ruled out building a subsea Sakhalin-Japan natural gas pipeline. That is not preventing continued talks on the ambitious project, which remains a bargaining tool in Russia's gas-price negotiations with China.

• December 14, 2012