“[Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] soldiers are firing Grads at civilians, hitting residential areas, orphanages, maternity hospitals with ballistic and cruise missiles. Ukraine is our home!”
This is the last social media post by 28-year-old Valeria Hlodan from Odesa.
India and issues relating to the country figure large in the latest US Department of Defense (Pentagon) report to Congress released on Tuesday. It needs to be emphasised that this is a report of a major US department which spends a great deal of money on ensuring the security of the United States (US). The money is appropriated by the US Congress, and therefore, there is often a tendency to overstate threats or to make them sound more immediate than they actually are. At the same time, while the Pentagon may be guilty of overstatement, its assessments are not figments of their imagination, but extrapolations of actual developments on the ground.
A US-led coalition fighting terrorists resumed regular patrols in Kurdish-held areas of northeast Syria on Friday after earlier Turkish airstrikes.
Patrols were reduced following the Turkish strikes that began on Nov. 20 in Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq, in response to a deadly Istanbul bombing that Ankara blamed on Kurdish groups.
After a devastating two-year civil war, the Ethiopian government and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a cessation of hostilities agreement on 2 November. The war killed over 500 000 people and displaced millions.
But the agreement still hasn’t received universal support across the Ethiopian political elite and their constituencies. A commitment to peace among these groups is as important as that of the government and the TPLF. Securing it could ease the implementation of potential sticking points in the peace agreement such as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration.
On November 21, 2022, Mali’s interim Prime Minister Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga posted a statement on social media to say that Mali has decided “to ban, with immediate effect, all activities carried out by NGOs operating in Mali with funding or material or technical support from France.” A few days before this statement, the French government cut official development assistance (ODA) to Mali because it believed that Mali’s government is “allied to Wagner’s Russian mercenaries.” Colonel Maïga responded by saying that these are “fanciful allegations” and a “subterfuge intended to deceive and manipulate national and international public opinion.”
A flash drive containing classified data, reportedly discovered hidden in the anus of an agent trying to cross the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, illustrates how Hungary has become a hub for Russian spying.
In late November, at a Ukrainian-Hungarian border crossing checkpoint, Ukrainian special forces armed with machine guns and rifles arrested a suspected Russian agent just as he was trying to cross the state border.
Honorary consuls are supposed to foster cooperation between two countries. In several cases involving Albania, they have dabbled in crime too.
On February 27, 2013, the then Sheraton hotel in Tirana was illuminated in the colours of the Mexican and Albanian flags. Inside, a band played mariachi music, women wore traditional ‘huipil’ dresses and waiters sported sombreros.
Anyone can declare their nationality as they see fit, but experts say some politicians in Bosnia are abusing the right for political gain.
Since the licence plate crisis erupted, Kosovo’s Prime Minister has become sandwiched between criticism coming from all sides, both at home and abroad.
Zoran Milanovic’s offensive approach to neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina underscores the folly in the theory that EU membership would raise standards and encourage good neighbourly relations.