Cooling towers of the Dukovany nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic, Sept. 27, 2011 (AP photo by Petr David Josek).

A fight over nuclear power is heating up in the European Union. While the Czech Republic and other Central and Eastern European states insist that the technology is vital to their transition from coal-generated energy, others in the bloc want to cut it out of the equation. The outcome of the debate could also help determine the fate of a stalled tender to build a new reactor at Dukovany, one of the country’s two existing nuclear power plants. Hopes in Prague were boosted in March when the Joint Research Center, an expert group for the European Commission, delivered a report […]

Then-Prime Minister Igor Matovic announces the resignation of Health Minister Marek Krajci, left, in Bratislava, Slovakia, March 11, 2021 (TASR photo by Pavel Neubauer via AP).

A display of hubris by Slovakian Prime Minister Igor Matovic over a controversial Russian coronavirus vaccine has cost him his job and shaken a reformist government in which many Slovaks had invested so much hope. On April 1, Matovic resigned, just over a year after coming to power following an election victory billed as a political earthquake. He has stayed on as finance minister in a government now led by Eduard Heger, of Matovic’s Ordinary People and Independent Personalities party, in a neat job-swap that saved the four-party ruling coalition. Matovic’s government had embarked upon tough judicial reforms and sought […]

A Ukrainian serviceman guards his position near the Line of Contact near Vodiane, 468 miles southeast of Kyiv, eastern Ukraine, Saturday, March 6, 2021 (AP photo by Evgeniy Maloletka).

For the better part of six years since Russia and Ukraine signed the Minsk II cease-fire accord for the disputed eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass, one question has loomed: How will the U.S. and NATO respond if Russian troops again cross back over the so-called Line of Contact, dividing Ukrainian forces from Russian-backed separatists? With reports now trickling in of a buildup of Russian military forces along the border and in Crimea, Washington and Brussels may need quick answers soon. In response to those reports, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke this week with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, […]