• General Pavel: NATO increases number of troops in Baltic States due to Russia's military buildup in the region

    NATO has expanded its military presence in the Baltic countries in connection with the buildup of the Russian Federation’s military potential, said the head of the Military Committee of the North Atlantic Alliance, the Czech general Petr Pavel. This was reported by Interfax-Ukraine.

    According to him, the buildup and modernization of Russian military potential has led to increased anxiety and fear among the population in the Baltic countries.

    “That’s why NATO has provided an expanded presence …

  • Bulgarian deputy prime minister calls Russian Patriarch 'KGB agent'

    Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov called Russian Patriarch Kirill of Moscow a “KGB agent” and “Russia’s cigarette metropolitan”, Radio Liberty writes.

    “He is not an orthodox cleric. He is agent Mikhailov, a second-rate Soviet KGB agent,” the Deputy Prime Minister remarked.

    According to Simeonov, the Russian patriarch has imported $14 billion worth of cigarettes into Russia since 1996.

    This was Simeonov’s response to Kirill’s statements that he was disappointed with the …

  • Former NATO Secretary General calls Putin's plan for the Donbas a 'trap'

    Deutsche Welle reports that former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has claimed that the introduction of a full-fledged peacekeeping mission in the Donbas would contribute to the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

    "I believe that the peacekeeping mission would become a mechanism for the implementation of the Minsk agreements," he said.

    In the meantime, according to Rasmussen, "there is no progress at all." He believes that the reason for this is precisely the absence of a …

  • Ukraine begins the inventory and seizure of Gazprom’s Ukrainian assets

    The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine is stepping up its activity to recover the fine from Russia's Gazprom, the press service of the government reported.

    According to the report, the executive proceeding in this case is being conducted by the Department of the State Executive Service of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine on the basis of the court's decision to recover from Gazprom 171,931,854,000 hryvnia ($6.5 billion) into the general fund of the state budget of Ukraine.

    The government said …

  • Kyiv: Ukraine will impose sanctions against the organizers of the Russian presidential elections in the Crimea

    Sanctions will be imposed against individuals who take part in organizing and conducting "voting" processes during the so-called elections of the President of the Russian Federation in the annexed Crimea, as stated by the Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine for European Integration, Olena Zerkal. According to her, Ukraine has already begun preparations for imposing these sanctions.

    "We are now working on the list of people who are collaborators, who take part in electoral commissions, and …