Compiled by Hristo Voynov and Eva Jovanova
1. The US announced that it will be suspending its obligations of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, and will formally leave the treaty in six months if Russia does not suspend its actions that the US says are violating the treaty. Russia has accused the US of moving towards a new arms race, denying violations and stating that it does not intend to follow the treaty unilaterally. This also raises fears of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) also being gutted. NATO agrees with the US assessment that Russia has been violating the treaty. Russia stated that it reserves the right to respond to any action that the US takes that go against the INF treaty, indicating that the treaty will not survive after the six-month suspension period and creating fears of a new arms race.
2. North Macedonia will sign the NATO accession protocol this Wednesday. The Macedonian Foreign Minister, Nikola Dimitrov, will officially sign it in Brussels on February 6. Greece announced that it would be the first country to ratify the protocol, and each NATO member will have to ratify it. The accession procedure usually lasts between 12 and 14 months, but Macedonia will get its seat in the NATO by the end of February.
3. The Special Representative of the U.S. State Department for Ukraine Negotiations, Kurt Volker, stated that the US and EU are considering further sanctions against Russia if it does not release the 24 Ukrainian sailors that it detained during the Kerch Strait incident of last November. Ukraine claims that Russia is not interested in any prisoner exchange and is instead waiting for the Ukrainian elections at the end of March before it decides its approach to negotiations, and so it is working to pressure the US and EU for further sanctions to push Russia into being more open to the international negotiations.
4. Kosovo is considering dropping the 100% tariffs it implemented on Serbian goods. This Tuesday Kosovo Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, announced that he was ready to drop the tariffs by the “principles of mutual recognition.” He had listed and sent conditions to the US, Germany, the UK, France, and Italy. The conditions included scheduling an international conference backed by the US and the EU whose main aim is to reach a final agreement with Serbia.
5. Further information continues to come out regarding the Slovakian government’s surveillance of journalists, particularly the murdered investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. Pavol Vorobjov, the then chair of the Intelligence Unit of the Financial Police, screened Ján Kuciak’s police files in the autumn of 2017 which was only a few months before his murder. The website that Kuciak worked for accused former police corps president Tibor Gašpar, Vorobjov’s boss, of ordering the screening, which has raised suspicion of government complicity, if not worse, to the murder. Gašpar has since resigned in his position as advisor to the Slovakian Interior Minister, but he denies that he ordered the surveillance.
6. Serbian opposition MPs began boycotting the Parliament. This Monday session was boycotted by most opposition MPs because of the mass protests against Vucic’s government in Serbia. They boycotted the Parliament while the Slovenian President’s visit was scheduled and announced that with their boycott they aim to send a clear signal that Serbia is not a democratic country.
7. Poland is considering legal changes after the fatal stabbing of Gdańsk Mayor Paweł Adamowicz to prevent similar future violence. This is a bipartisan effort, as the violence was committed by an apolitical man seeking revenge. Because of this, the efforts are likely to focus on regulations regarding security firms and tactics. The difficult part may be regulating hate speech, which falls under proposed efforts to limit public violence because of the heated political environment in the country. This announcement was well timed, as it was shortly before an ultra-nationalist march in Auschwitz on Holocaust Memorial Day, which was openly anti-Semitic in its rhetoric. Police are looking into the march to consider if any actions against its organizers are justified. While the two are unrelated, Poland is sensitive to its history during Nazi occupation, and so the two are likely to be combined when lawmakers decide on how to tackle violent rhetoric in the country.
8. Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, will be the home of a new Facebook content review center. Facebook will employ around 150 speakers of Russian, Turkish, Georgian, and Kazakh languages, who will be checking potentially violent material. Election meddling and fake news are still one of the main issues that Facebook deals with. However, it is not known if the content review center will address either of the two.
9. The left-wing opposition in Hungary has started its efforts to consolidate its votes into one candidate in order to tackle President Viktor Orban’s hold on Hungary. This is for the mayoral elections of Budapest, which are scheduled for autumn, but it is seen as the most important elections before the 2022 general election when Orban is up for reelection. At the same time, the right-wing opposition party Jobbik has been hit with a scandal over videos of the party leader and his wife that imply nazi sympathies and racism, which harken back to Jobbik’s far-right past that it is currently trying to escape. Polish opposition leaders are similarly trying to bring as many opposition parties together in an effort to counter the ruling party’s hold on the country. With this, it is no surprise that the ruling parties of both countries see each other as strategic partners.
10. Except for Slovenia, with a score of 60, all Balkan countries were ranked very poorly in the latest Transparency International report on corruption perception. On a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (not corrupt), Albania was the most poorly ranked Balkan country with a score of 36. Macedonia and Kosovo scored a bit better, with 37, but it notes that Kosovo’s 2017 score had decreased for two points. They were followed by Bosnia (38), Serbia (39), Bulgaria (42), Montenegro (45), Romania (47), and Croatia (48). Denmark, scoring 88, was perceived to be the least corrupt country in the world.
0 comments