Early on July 22 the two black boxes from the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 were handed over by Alexander Boroday, Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) to Colonel Mohamed Sakri of Malaysian National Security Council… The world watched on TV how an official of the state that had suffered most as a result of the MH17 tragedy personally thanked for cooperation «Mr. Boroday» and his people who are called «pro-Russian terrorists» by Kiev and the West… This episode is hardly supporting the myth about the «terrorists» who shot down the civilian airliner… On TV, the DPR Prime Minister and the members of his team looked like a group of reasonable people in control of themselves – unlike Ukrainian parliamentarians who literally fight each other in the session hall and can never agree on anything. If the «terrorists» were just doing what Moscow told them to do, then, perhaps, the advice was not so bad. If not, then shall we view the DPR as an independent and responsible actor in international affairs?..

Indonesia is gearing up for the presidential election on July 9, 2014. Although the largest Southeast Asian nation has been a presidential republic since 1945 (with only a brief interval in the 1950s), this is just the third time that its top leader is to be elected by popular vote. Incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (or SBY for short) who won the races in 2004 and 2009 is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term in office. After ten years in power he will have to leave the presidential palace. But with the start of the presidential campaign on June 5 the polls began to fluctuate, and the election outcome no longer looks quite as certain as before. 

The APEC annual summit took place on the island of Bali (Indonesia) in early October.  The APEC encompasses 21 states situated in Asia, Australia, South and North America.  The goal has never changed since the foundation; it is the economic and commercial liberalization in the Asia-Pacific region.  With over 20 summits behind, the rhetoric is forever the same saying economic growth is impossible without fostering export, providing free access to outside markets for transnational corporations as well as relentless fight against protectionism. The longer the global crisis lasts, the less convincing it sounds…