Read the introduction here. In the last ten years, Belarusian economy fueled with cheap Russian energy experienced high growth rates; however, such rapid economic development parallels a process of a close political alliance with Russia and potentially might threaten Belarusian sovereignty. In order to fully understand events and factors that led Belarus to such position, [...]

On December 8, 1991, Boris Yeltsin, Stanislav Shushkevich and Leonid Kravchuk, the leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, signed the Belavezha agreement which effectively dissolved the Soviet Union. As a result of this colossal event, Belarus, just like other former Soviet republics, not only acquired independence but also faced a crucial survival test. The republic [...]

What is my point? Russian peasant soldiers, and not Petrograd’s workers influenced an outcome of the February Revolution of 1917. Specifically: Whenever I hear official versions of the events that led to the February Revolution of 1917, they tend to say how the proletarian forces joined by peasant soldiers took down Russian monarchy. While an [...]

On the eve of Vice President Joe Bidden visit to Georgia, Georgian President Saakashvili hastily offered a number of democratic reforms, reports inopressa.ru. According to the article, President Saakashvilli proposed changes are to be instituted in the next 100 days. But since such reforms -if ever introduced in reality and not paper – will require [...]

Georgia considers Medvedev’s visit to South Osetia as a symbolic provocation, report Russian news sources. During the last parliamentary session, the speaker of the Georgian Parliament said that the visit was: ” A Russian answer to the United States of America and Europe for their support of the Georgian sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Rbc.ru reports that the Moscow City Government accused Ukrainian President Victor Yuschenko of steering Ukraine’s politics towards a “terry nationalism course.” In a statement, Mr. Yuschenko is quoted by saying that activities carried out by the Moscow City sponsored organizations are “unfriendly and contentious.” In its turn, the Moscow City Government counter-attacked stating that the [...]

US Charge d’Affaires Jonathan Moore said to the Charter’97 press center that there’s no formal decision on shutting the embassy in Minsk. According to the diplomat, Washington is continuing to consider the situation about the American diplomats in Belarus. The Associated Press reported 1 May the US Department of State had ordered Belarus to close [...]

Hello world. I apologize for not posting any articles in a while. And so I thought that it would be good to re-start posting with some interesting material on global energy, security and geopolitics that greatly influence many important decisions in our rather turbulent times. Not long ago, on April 15, 2008, the Center for [...]

I tried to start writing this post couple of times and every time I ended up looking at the blinking cursor and unable to collect my thoughts. Sometimes pictures can tell the story better than words and this is why we simply put here WWII military photos made by German soldiers in Belarus during the [...]

An interesting comments made by Andrei Sannikov,a member of the organising committee of the civil campaign “European Belarus”, appeared on the web(Charter97.org). And I think they are worth of your time as he goes over some important issues facing Belarus and its political direction. “Alyaksandr Lukashenka is consciously set to break relations with the US, [...]