Author: Stamatios Zurleas

Budapest (5/7 – 11.11) Former European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker defended U.S. President Joe Biden after his disastrous debate performance last week and warned of his rival Donald Trump’s “incomplete mind and flawed reasoning,” in an interview with Brussels Playbook. Juncker, who was Commission president from 2014 to 2019 during much of Trump’s presidency, said he had yet to watch last week’s debate, which triggered calls for Biden to step aside and make room for someone else to run as the Democratic presidential candidate. Still, Juncker insisted that “one can be of a certain age … and do a good job.” But Juncker…

A group of opponents of the Tajik government in Europe said that the authorities have increased pressure on their relatives inside the country for three days. The reason, according to them, was that “the president of the Republic of Tajikistan is likely to visit one of the European countries, and the representatives of the opposition should not hold demonstrations, raise slogans, and throw eggs against him.” Tajik authorities have not yet announced the president’s visit abroad. Our efforts to get an official comment have so far been unsuccessful. The travel time is also not exact. “The authorities demand the parents…

Polls show that a large percentage of Israeli citizens have lost faith in the future of their nation Major General (Reserve) in the Israeli Army, and former ombudsman for the occupation forces, Yitzhak Brick, has sounded an alarm over the growing inefficacy of the country’s army to win a possible war. Warning that the Israeli occupation forces have turned into an “air force army,” Brick criticized the leadership in Tel Aviv for their “sensitivity” towards human losses on the ground. “Whoever wants to completely avoid losing on the battlefield, completely loses the deterrence of the army and the ability to…

Berlin/Singapore (1/3 – 38.46). Russian propagandists have published a recording of a “conversation between four senior German officers”. In it, they discuss the possible supply of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. The recording is authentic, the Bundeswehr has since confirmed. “This is a very serious matter and that is why it is now the subject of a very meticulous, in-depth and rapid investigation,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. On Friday afternoon, a half-hour recording of the conversation, which reportedly dates to Monday, Feb. 19, circulated on Russian propaganda channels. Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russia’s state broadcaster RT, then published…

Kiev, London (25/3 – 50) Kiev is being bombed by the Russians, but despite the dangers the indiscriminate bombing brings, Ukrainians have their humor, and a bit of the “so what” attitude. Let’s call her Maria, because we don’t know her correct name and we don’t want to endanger the young coffee aficionado to targeted Russian attacks targeting the Ukrainian spirit of everything can be fixed with a good cup of coffee. The young Ukrainian barista keeps working despite today’s Russian missile strike destroying large parts of her cafe. “They won’t be able to break us,” Maria tells the reporter…

Brussels (12/03 – 55.56) Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, said that the dissolution of human rights NGOs signals a deteriorating environment for civil society and human rights defence in Tajikistan. She reiterated that Tajikistan must reconsider its attitudes towards civil society and view human rights defenders as allies instead of enemies. Earlier in November 2023, Tajikistan Minister of Justice announced that 700 NGOs in the country had been liquidated over an 18-month period. “Human rights defenders working on so-called sensitive issues, including freedom from torture, the right to housing and compensation for requisitioned land, minority rights, freedom of belief and good governance, political rights, and…

Tajikistan’s existential project to build the colossal 335-meter-high Roghun hydropower dam is proceeding apace, but costs are spiraling, and to a level that is making it hard to see where the government is going to find the funds needed to finish the work. To complicate matters for Dushanbe, this is happening against the backdrop of calls from environmental watchdogs for international development lenders to pause the allocation of any future funds to Tajikistan pending a fresh assessment of the project. The extent of the budget overshoot is striking. In a press conference on February 16, Finance Minister Faiziddin Kahhorzoda revealed…

The United States agreed to the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey on condition that Turkey not use them for overflights above the Greek islands but only for NATO alliance purposes, the Greek Kathimerini daily reported, citing “reliable diplomatic sources.” The daily said a confidential letter was sent from the US State Department to the “four relevant committees” in the House of Representatives and the Senate, on the issue. The letter reportedly stipulated that if this condition is violated, the State Department pledges to take the initiative to address the problem, and if the issue is still not resolved, the…

The country’s move toward joining the European Union coincides with a swing toward Moscow.  If all goes as expected, Georgia will take the first step on the long road of joining the European Union this week. But even for those in the former Soviet country who have spent decades working for just this moment, now that it has come, it is at best bittersweet. “The problem is not technical, it’s fundamental,” former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili wrote from prison in a note to POLITICO.   “Georgia is a state seized by one oligarch controlled from Moscow,” he added. He’s referring to Bidzina…

Boliden is planning to resume wage negotiations next month with around 650 employees at its Tara zinc operation in Ireland with a view to resuming output in the second quarter of 2024, the Swedish miner told Reuters. Boliden (BOL.ST) put its Tara operations on care and maintenance in June due to negative cash flows after prices of the galvanizing metal hit a three-year low on Jun. 1 2023 . A restart would boost supplies of the world’s fourth most used metal and potentially add to surpluses of refined zinc expected by analysts for next year. The Tara mine, which produced 198,000 tonnes of zinc…