A summit between leaders of the European Union and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko yesterday did little to convince onlookers that Ukraine would be joining the EU anytime soon. The EU has downplayed a prior claim that they would consider a peacekeeping mission to eastern Ukraine, while Poroshenko loudly defended the debt restricting deal/economic reforms and…
Kyrgyz Prime Minister Joomart Otorbaev announced he is stepping down after just over a year in office, making this the fifth prime minister the country has seen since the 2010 revolution. Otorbaev didn’t give an immediate reason for his resignation but the move comes in the midst of an enormous debate over the operations of…
Today, EU antitrust regulators have made the case the Gazprom has abused its dominance over European natural gas markets. The European Commission said that unfair pricing has resulted in higher gas prices in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland – most of which are almost 100% dependent on imported Russian natural gas. Regulators assert a…
EU Leaders snubbed the Russian Victory Day parade, which celebrates the ending of World War II (called the Great Patriotic War in Russia) by refusing or otherwise rebuffing offers to attend. Russian media conglomerates blamed pressure from the United States and Russian leaders rebuked the European political elite for “boycotting those who lost hundreds of…
The ruble has been on a relatively steady upward trajectory since the beginning of the year, and yesterday traded for the first time under the exchange rate of 50:1 on the dollar since last November. In total, the currency has regained 22% of its value. Most analysts point to rising oil benchmarks and Russian sovereign…
It’s generally the contention among observers of Central Asia that most governments fear a spillover of violence from Afghanistan into their own territories, feeding nascent Islamist movements and causing large-scale violent disruptions in governance. This is hard to refute given the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan and the increasing recruiting activities of ISIS among…
The deals with the private sector done, Ukraine is now scrambling to renegotiate its sovereign debt with other governments, most notably Russia. Additionally, Kiev’s Finance Ministry are working to provide currency swap lines to boost the country’s emergency cash reserves for the coming months (neatly coinciding with the return of gas debt talks with Russian…
Just as quickly as they began, the Ukrainian debt restructuring talks appear to be over. On Saturday, Kiev agreed to a debt restricting plan with debtholders like Franklin Templeton, PIMCO, and Blackrock as part of the $40 billion IMF bailout agreed to last month. Ukraine has agreed to a debt-swap in exchange for liquidation from…
The long-awaited deadline for the prospective nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 Powers has come and gone, but negotiations have continued. The US State Department reported that “enough progress” had been made to merit working through this deadline, but despite the optimism, there is no sign that the most contentious issues have been resolved.…
Over the weekend, China unveiled its newest foreign policy initiative: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) a multilateral development bank headed by Beijing to provide financing for Asian projects. The AIIB is a clear rival to Western-headed development banks such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank, which are all popularly…
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