Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has reached his X time of European strategy. This December the Summit Ukraine-EU shall take place, within the frameworks of which during two years of Yanukovych’s presidency they have planned to sign an Association Treaty of Ukraine and the EU that would include into itself also the treaty on the establishment of free trade area Ukraine-EU. However, considering imprisonment of Yulia Timoshenko and approach with Russia this prospect is doubted by experts. “Politcom.ru” asked the Chairman of the “shadow government” of Ukraine one of the leaders of “Batskivshchina” party Sergey Sobolev to answer the questions whether Ukraine is ready to go the unstable EU and whether it can count on further integration. READ MORE

Won’t fight Russia again, official says READ MORE

TOKYO – Despite the relentless shift of global economic might to Asia, and China’s rise as a great power – the central historical events of our time, which will drive world affairs for the foreseeable future – America’s focus has been elsewhere. The terrorist attacks of 2001, followed by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Great Contraction of 2008, the Arab Spring, and Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, all diverted the United States from helping to create a lasting structure of peace to accommodate today’s resurgent Asia. READ MORE

President Dalia Grybauskaitė and President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, currently on a working visit in Lithuania, discussed the situation in the eurozone, the preparedness for negotiating a new financial framework of the European Union, and the Nordic-Baltic cooperation. This is the first visit of the Estonian President after his reelection for the second term. READ MORE

Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Karim Massimov arrived on Sunday for a working visit in Saint Petersburg to attend the Council of the Heads of Government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states. READ MORE

Russia recognises that concrete steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions need to be agreed at climate talks in South Africa next month before a globally binding climate deal can emerge by 2015, EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said on Thursday. READ MORE

On 11 November on his first working visit to London, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Audronius Ažubalis and the U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague discussed the most important issues of the European Union, security policies, and bilateral and regional cooperation. READ MORE

From the countries of Central Asia to the crowded tracks of India, the train is a common sight in many Asian countries. But due to war, poverty and the fear of invasion the age of the railway passed Afghanistan by. Until today. READ MORE

U.S.-Russian relations seem to have been relatively quiet recently, as there are numerous contradictory views in Washington about the true nature of Russia’s current foreign policy. Doubts remain about the sincerity of the U.S. State Department’s so-called “reset” of relations with Russia — the term used in 2009 when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed a reset button to her Russian counterpart as a symbol of a freeze on escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington. The concern is whether the “reset” is truly a shift in relations between the two former adversaries or simply a respite before relations deteriorate again. READ MORE

The balance of powers has started changing expressly. In the middle of September the EU Council approved the mandate of the talks of the EU with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on conclusion of legally binding treaty on Transcaspian gas pipeline construction. As Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger declared, the access of the EU to the pre-Caspian region and Central Asia becomes a key issue from now on. Transcaspian gas pipeline is considered to be a part of NABUCCO gas pipeline which is represented by West as an alternative to the “South Stream”. In this respect Brussels declared that it is ready to get down to the operations on preparing the countries of Caspian region and Transcaucasia to the reality of negotiations, and to start specific talks with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. In this respect Iran has reminded: “Development of transport infrastructure in Caspian region, as well as hydrocarbons transportation is the exclusive prerogative of only pre-Caspian states”. READ MORE