Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for 30 years, is looking to reelect himself for the seventh time. In the run-up to the January 2025 presidential elections, Lukashenko has pardoned prisoners convicted of extremism, claiming that it was a "humane gesture" toward those who had "gone astray." Far from being criminals, those […]

A declassified U.S. intelligence memorandum sheds light on Russia's suspected assassination attempts of political adversaries abroad, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 23. The intelligence assessment, which Bloomberg obtained through the U.S.'s Freedom of Information Act, details how U.S. intelligence believed in 2016 that suspected Kremlin-ordered assassinations abroad would likely persist. The document includes well-known cases, such […]

With the looming risk that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump may pull the plug on Washington's support for Ukraine, Kyiv has flirted with the option of nuclear deterrence. The prospect of such a scenario was raised weeks earlier when President Volodymyr Zelensky in October said he had told Trump during a September meeting in New York […]

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen rebuked Hungary over its stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine, and its strengthening of political and economic ties with Moscow in comments at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Oct. 9 In what promised to be a heated plenary session, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban had hoped to […]