*To read Part One, please click here. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, have de facto acquiesced to the quasi-recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk “armed formations” in a signed agreement at the political level on July 27. Following the... MORE

Open-source evidence makes it possible to trace the steps that led Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, to quasi-recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk “armed formations” in a signed agreement at the political level (see EDM, July 29, 30, August 5).... MORE

The Volga-Don Canal, the last of the great Stalinist-era construction projects, which involved the use of German prisoners of war and Soviet GULAG prisoners to move more than 150 million cubic meters of earth and pour more than 3 million tons of concrete, marked its... MORE

President Vladimir Putin used the July 26, 2020, Navy Day and the Main Navy Parade in St. Petersburg to once again promote Russia’s “superweapons,” which will ostensibly give the Russian Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF) “a unique advantage” over its Western counterparts. According to Putin, “The... MORE

The ministers of foreign affairs of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine held a trilateral meeting in the southeastern Polish city of Lublin, on July 28, to discuss regional cooperation (Gov.pl, July 28). To pursue such future development, the officials notably established the “Lublin Triangle,” a new... MORE

Russia’s presidential envoy for conflict-management in Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak, has sent a highly undiplomatic letter to his other counterparts in the “Normandy” forum, gloating over bypassing this forum to maneuver Kyiv into quasi-recognizing Moscow’s military proxies in Donetsk-Luhansk. The agreement on “Measures to Strengthen the... MORE

The first annual Political Consultations within the scope of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum—a discussion format established following last year’s (October 23–24, 2019) inaugural Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi—took place on July 8, 2020. Held via videoconference, the meeting assembled Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his... MORE

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis notwithstanding, Ukrainian politics has thoroughly entered campaign mode with local elections scheduled for this coming October. According to the Kyiv-based pollster Rating Group, as of a month ago, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, Servant of the People, registers 29.3 percent support among... MORE

In March 2020, eight personnel in the German-led, multinational North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) battalion in Lithuania tested positive for the novel coronavirus (The Baltic Times, March 24). From a defense-planning standpoint, the spread of COVID-19 to the Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) units stationed along... MORE

The protests in Khabarovsk and other Russian cities in Siberia and the Far East over the last month (see EDM, August 3) have called attention to something that has been a problem for the central Russian government since at least the 19th century and will... MORE