As the world marks 25th year of the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine, the anniversary has gained an eerily contemporary resonance after the earthquake in Japan which damages reactors at the Fukushima power plant and prompts leaks of radiation

• April 26, 2011

A weird anti-Lithuanian campaign in Poland as well as the ongoing construction of experimental Russian nuclear plants, which are described as unsafe by environmentalists, in Russia’s Kaliningrad and Belarus is forcing Vilnius to look at what’s going on to its south, although Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, visiting Norway on April 5-6, said that her country’s priority is cooperation with the Nordic countries.

• April 25, 2011

Mikhail Roshchin, EGF Affiliated Expert

While many in Russia have become accustomed to gas disputes with Ukraine as the flagship event hailing in the New Year, the start of 2011 brought with it a far more tragic security crisis when a major bomb blast ripped through the crowded halls of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. The attack occurred in the arrivals area of the airport at 4.32 pm, on 24 January 2011, claiming the lives of 36 individuals and injuring 116 more. An act of terrorism was immediately assumed by many security experts, possibly involving a suicide bomber, who employed an explosive device containing 5-7 kilogrammes of Trinitrotoluene (TNT). Among the victims was Anna Yablonskaya, a 29-years-old Ukrainian playwright and poet who had come to Moscow to receive a prize from the magazine Art of the Cinema for her recent play. This attack follows the March 2010 suicide bombing in which two women, originally from Dagestan, blew themselves up in Moscow’s underground causing the death of 40 commuters. As was the case in the March 2010 attack, separatist-terrorists from the Russian North Caucasus were suspected of involvement in the Domodedovo attacks. These suspicions appeared to be confirmed earlier this month, when Chechen rebel leader, Doku Umarov, claimed responsibility for the bombing on February 4. In his video broadcast confirming responsibility for the attack, Umarov justified his actions on the basis of Russian state policy in the North Caucasus. READ MORE

• April 25, 2011

Georgia's parliament has annulled an agreement with Russia allowing Moscow to use its territory as a transit nation for a Russian military base in Armenia

• April 21, 2011

Japan has made it illegal to enter a 20km (12-mile) evacuation zone around the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactor.

• April 21, 2011

Ukraine failed to raise the $1 billion to seal Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, as budget concerns and the accident at Fukushima in Japan caused some governments to balk at further spending.

• April 19, 2011

ISSUE #13
04/18/2011

On 12 April 2011, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin paid an official visit to Ukraine. During the visit, the Russian premier met with his Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Azarov and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. READ MORE

• April 19, 2011

Russia tries to revive the Russian Empire by means of the Customs Union – experts

Prior to this week’s visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Ukraine, the Gorshenin Institute asked experts to answer the following question: “What is more beneficial to Ukraine – setting up a free trade area with the EU or joining the Customs Union with Russia?” READ MORE

• April 19, 2011