The emergency authorisation of COVID-19 vaccines requires a “great deal of seriousness and reflection”, the World Health Organization said on Monday after the United States announced it was considering fast-tracking candidate drugs.

• August 31, 2020

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia imposed travel bans on President Alexander Lukashenko and 29 other Belarusian officials on Monday, signalling impatience with the West’s cautious approach by announcing sanctions without waiting for the rest of the EU.

• August 31, 2020

Comments by a senior U.S. official and moves by Britain towards the possible fast-tracking of COVID-19 vaccines show the West now accepts Russia was right to approve a vaccine as early as August, a Russian official said on Monday.

• August 31, 2020

By Benyamin Poghosyan, PhD, Chairman, Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies

A managed process of co-operation and competition continues to characterise Turkish-Russian relations, and in the future this may also extend to the South Caucasus.
Russia-Turkey relations have experienced significant ups and downs in recent years: The warming of relations at the beginning of the 2010s; the crisis after the November 2015 shooting of a Russian military jet; the new phase of partnership from late 2016 to 2019; the new crisis as a result of direct military clashes in Syrian Idlib in January-February 2020 and Turkish support of the Government of National Accord in Libya; and another phase of normalisation after the March 5 agreement on Idlib was reached by the two presidents. READ MORE

• August 31, 2020

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, facing a nearly three-week popular uprising since a disputed election, threatened on Friday to cut off European transit routes across his country if sanctions are imposed.

• August 28, 2020

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Friday that the coronavirus pandemic would worsen in coming months, and that life would not return to normal until a vaccine against it had been developed.

• August 28, 2020

Russia is preparing to approve a second vaccine against COVID-19 in late September or early October, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said on Wednesday.

• August 26, 2020

A Russian government plane which is used to carry senior government officials, including the head of the FSB security service, landed in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Wednesday, flight tracking data showed.

• August 26, 2020