June 19:
Russian officials are irate over Belgium's seizure of Russian state assets following a court ruling compelling Russia to compensate shareholders of former Russian oil company Yukos. According to the BBC, last year a Belgian court ordered Russia to pay $50 billion to Yukos stockholders as restitution for the firm being acquired and dismembered by the Russian state in 2007. After waiting for months for Russia to abide by the verdict, Belgian prosecutors finally decided to seize Russian state assets located in Belgium earlier this month. Russia's envoy to Brussels has decried the move as "an openly hostile act" that "crudely violates the recognized norms of international law." The Russian Foreign Ministry has formally demanded that Belgium return the seized property.
If Sweden moves ahead with plans to join NATO, Russia will be forced to take "countermeasures," a top Kremlin diplomat has warned. In a recent interview with Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Russian ambassador to Sweden Viktor Tatarinstev took pains to declare that "Sweden is not a target for our armed troops," but also warned that - should Stockholm decide to join the Atlantic Alliance - that "Russia will have to resort to a response of the military kind and re-orientate our troops and missiles." "The country that joins NATO needs to be aware of the risks it is exposing itself to," London's Independent reports Tatarinstev as saying.
June 20:
Moscow is beefing up its military presence in Kaliningrad. Business Insider reports that recent weeks have seen a massive influx of military hardware into the Baltic enclave, transforming it into "one of Europe's most militarized places." NATO officials have confirmed that Russia is stationing "thousands of troops, including mechanized and naval infantry brigades, military aircraft, modern long-range air defense units and hundreds of armored vehicles in the territory."
The news is generating fears among neighboring nations. "They're making quite big military exercises in the Kaliningrad district very, very close to our neighborhood," former Lithuanian premier Andrius Kubilius has said. "So of course we are worried about such military developments very close to our borders." Observers likewise see the Russian decision as a potential escalation of Russia's confrontation with the West. "From Kaliningrad you can just go right out and you're there; there's Sweden, Poland, Germany's not that far away," notes Dmitry Gorenburg of the CNA Corporation. "So, it's almost like you can set it up as a forward-operating base without leaving your own country's territory."
June 21:
The Pentagon is bracing for a protracted period of tension with Russia, Reuters reports. The news agency cites Defense Secretary Ash Carter as saying that much of the changes now taking place in NATO's military posture are geared toward better competing with and deterring Moscow over the long term. These "adaptations" are based on the "anticipation that Russia might not change under Vladimir Putin, or even thereafter," Carter has told reporters.
June 22:
The European Union has decided to extend its sanctions on Russia by half a year. According to the Wall Street Journal, the bloc has formally decided to prolong its economic sanctions on Russia until late January of 2016, in order to gauge whether Moscow will fully comply with the terms of February's Minsk II ceasefire. Russia has decried the move, terming the sanctions to be "unfounded" and "illegal."
Officials in Kyiv, however, are heartened. The EU's decision is a reflection of European "solidarity" with Ukraine, according to Valeriy Chaly, a foreign policy adviser to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and "proves that the only way for Moscow to lift restrictive measures is to abide responsibly by letter and spirit of the peace accords and international law, rather than taking efforts to undermine the EU unity by political, economic or propaganda means."