Author: vraevski

Strengthening China’s Positions in Afghanistan

vraevski

Roman Kot While the United States, against the background of the escalation of its relations with Iran, is dwelling on how to get rid of the consequences of another protracted conflict in Afghanistan by withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, China more and more bluntly demonstrates willingness to fill in this “vacuum”. On the 20th June, 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC issued a statement on the Taliban delegation’s visit to Beijing. At the meeting, Chinese experts discussed establishing a peace process in Afghanistan and combating terrorism. It would seem that the level of such a meeting cannot be considered the highest since it was a working visit. China’s long-standing ties with the Taliban, mainly through the intermediary of Pakistani…

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Protests in Georgia. And Lessons for Ukraine

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Victor Hvozd In Georgia, like in Moldova, Moscow is rehearsing technologies of influence on post-Soviet countries   This year, a series of sharp political crises and conflicts resumed in a number of post-Soviet countries. For example, in May–June 2019, this was observed in Moldova, which barely escalated into mass disorder. Today, the same situation arose in Georgia. At this, there is a lot in common in Moldovan and Georgian events caused by internal problems provoked by Russia. Thus, the protest in Georgia arose because of the Russian State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of Russia, the President of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy S. Gavrilov’s statement in the Georgian Parliament. The…

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Israeli-Lebanese confrontation on the Eastern Mediterranean shelf

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Oleksiy  Volovych The natural gas and oil deposits in the Lebanese energy basin in the Eastern Mediterranean, discovered by the American oil and gas company Noble Energy Mediterranean in 2009–2010, have become almost at once exploration and development target for the countries of the sub-region — Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. In 2010, the US Geological Survey previously estimated reserves of hydrocarbons in the Levantine Basin at 3.45 trillion cubic metres  of gas and 1.7 billion barrels of oil. According to other data, the potential of the region…

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To Bomb Or Not to Bomb?

vraevski

Iran shot down an American UAV in the Persian Gulf   According to the Iran Daily of June 21, 2019, on 19th June the Air Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran shot down a US UAV in the Kouh-e Mobarak district, near the city of Jask, the southern province of Hormozgan. After an inspection of the wreckage, the Iranian side identified the drone as the MQ-4C Triton of the US Navy, which is a modification of the RQ-4 Global Hawk. Iran’s Supreme National…

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