Catch up quickly with the stories from Central and Eastern Europe that matter, this week led by news of Ukraine’s ongoing advance inside Russia’s Kursk region.
Russia’s war on Ukraine
Ukraine’s top commander this week said Kyiv’s forces control 1,000 sq km of Russian territory as they press their biggest cross-border incursion in two-and-a-half years of full-scale war.
Commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said Ukraine continued to “conduct an offensive operation in the Kursk region” seven days after it began.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had brought war to others and now it was coming back to Russia.
But Russian leader Vladimir Putin described the offensive as a “major provocation” and ordered Russian forces to “to kick the enemy out of our territory”.
A growing number of people have been evacuated from the western Russian region for their safety, with a further 59,000 told to leave.
The acting governor of Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, said during a meeting with President Putin that 28 villages in the area had fallen to Ukrainian forces, that 12 civilians had been killed and that “the situation remains difficult”.
Ukrainian troops launched their surprise attack last Tuesday, advancing up to 30 kilometres into Russia.
Ukraine’s finance minister this week called on its western allies to speed up disbursement of a 50 billion US dollars loan, claiming delays in weapons deliveries had contributed to a yawning budget deficit that has left Kyiv scrambling to find money to pay its army.
Serhiy Marchenko told the Financial Times that the slow dispersal of weapons, especially from the US, had contributed to a 12 billion US dollars rise in military spending.
The 12 billion US dollars rise meant the country was set to record a deficit that other government officials have estimated at just under a quarter of GDP, or 43.5 billion US dollars, this year.
Some 27 billion US dollars-worth of direct US military aid was approved by Congress in April this year, but its disbursement continues to be “slow”, Marchenko said. “We still have a lack of necessary weapons, ammunition and shells.”
The situation meant the country “will have a lack of money to cover salaries for our troops,” the finance minister said, adding that the delays in aid meant that pay packets set aside for the end of 2024 were used to “purchase necessary weapons and ammunition” at the start of this year.
Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak on Thursday denied his country’s involvement in explosions which damaged the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and instead pointed the finger at Russia.
“Such an act can only be carried out with extensive technical and financial resources … and who possessed all this at the time of the bombing? Only Russia,” Podolyak said in comments to Reuters.
The multi-billion dollar Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines transporting gas under the Baltic Sea were ruptured by a series of explosions in September 2022, seven months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal had reported that top Ukrainian officials were involved in the explosions.
It claimed that President Zelensky initially approved the plan only to change his mind when the CIA learnt of it and asked the Ukrainian leader to pull the plug. Zelensky’s commander in chief, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, who was leading the effort, nonetheless forged ahead.
Other news from the region
Poland is launching a programme worth nearly five billion euros, financed from the European Union’s recovery funds, to provide loans to builders of offshore wind farms on the Baltic Sea, the state assets ministry and bank BGK said on Tuesday. Developers including the consortia of Polish state-controlled utility PGE with Orsted and refiner Orlen’s with Northland Power plan to build 5.9 gigawatt (GW) of offshore wind capacity by 2030. Loans will be extended for projects of at least 300 megawatts of capacity and will not require the approval of the European Commission.
Poland also this week signed a 10 billion US dollars agreement to purchase almost a hundred AH-64E Apache attack helicopters from US manufacturer Boeing Co., as Warsaw ramps up its defensive capabilities. The deal for the 96 US-made helicopters, signed on Tuesday, amounts to the most expensive military purchase undertaken by the Polish government. “Today’s agreement changes the face of aviation, air forces, the functioning of the Polish army,” Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said. “Helicopters, drones and tanks are the future of the Polish army.”
Thousands of people in Serbia protested in Belgrade this week against plans to mine one of Europe’s largest deposits of lithium—a crucial raw material for electric car batteries. Activists say the mine would cause irreversible environmental destruction to Serbia’s Jadar Valley, where the deposit is located. A licence granted to mining giant Rio Tinto was revoked in 2022 following widespread protests in the country, but the project was restarted last month following a court decision and government U-turn. President Aleksandar Vučić has insisted that strict environmental safety protocols will be put in place.
In Azerbaijan, officials have green-lighted the resumption of operations at a controversial gold mine following a more than year-long hiatus due to public protests over pollution concerns. Trouble at the mine near the village of Soyudlu in western Azerbaijan’s Gadabay District began in mid-2023, when its operator, Anglo Asian Mining, sought to build a second artificial lake to handle mine tailings. On August 5, Anglo Asian Mining announced that it had received an authorisation to restart operations, including the expansion of an existing pond containing toxic waste.
The European Commission this week approved, under EU State aid rules, a 99.5 million euros Romanian measure in favour of Finland’s Nokian Tyres. The aid will support the establishment of a new zero carbon dioxide emission factory for passenger car tyres in the western Romanian city of Oradea. The Commission says that the measure will contribute to the EU’s strategic objectives relating to job creation, regional development, and to the green transition of the regional economy. Total investment in the plant is estimated at 650 million euros.
Kyrgyzstan‘s Interior Ministry this week rejected a statement by Bulgarian authorities saying that hundreds of kilograms of heroin seized in Bulgaria had come from Kyrgyzstan. The ministry said it was in contact with the Bulgarian authorities to monitor developments. The day before, Bulgarian port officials said that 436 kilograms of heroin estimated to be worth nearly 38 million US dollars was seized at the Black Sea port of Burgas in a trailer that had arrived at the end of July on a land route from Kyrgyzstan to the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi.
Czech Radio (Cesky rozhlas) this week suspended ties with its Slovak counterpart STVR for an indefinite period of time over mounting fears of political meddling and interference in the Slovak public service broadcaster’s operations, the Sme daily reported on Monday. A Czech Radio spokesman described the “forced demise” earlier this year of predecessor RTVS, and the creation, effective since July, of STVR in its stead as the “first step towards the nationalisation of the [Slovak] public broadcaster”, whose independence and impartiality now hang by a thread, the Slovak daily reported.
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