Fugitive billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc’s godson, Andrian Candu, is spearheading an operation to regain a share of power in Moldova, under the guise of a parliamentary coalition. Plahotniuc was Moldova’s de facto ruler, flanked by Candu (then-chairperson of the parliament), until the June 2019 regime change,... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   While Mikheil Saakashvili served as governor of Ukraine’s Odesa Province (May 2015–November 2016), the region presented the former Georgian president with hurdles not only to system reforms but even to rational management as such. Those obstacles included:... MORE

Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has accepted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s offer to chair the Executive Committee of Ukraine’s National Council for Reforms (Ukrinform, May 7). Taking up the new challenge, Saakashvili promised to draw on the experience of his universally recognized achievements in Georgia... MORE

In mid-April, Russia offered Moldova, at the latter’s insistence, an inter-governmental loan of €200 million ($217 million) on soft terms. Moldova’s Socialist-led government had planned this loan mainly for road construction, before the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic broke out. At present and in the near-to-medium term,... MORE

Russia and Moldova signed an inter-governmental loan agreement on April 17, in Moscow, at Chisinau’s insistence. Chisinau had initially sought a Russian loan for infrastructure development, but it may have to spend these Russian funds (along with Western assistance) to mitigate Moldova’s current fiscal emergency... MORE

Ukraine’s top businessmen are answering President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call to assist and even lead the country’s efforts to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic. Zelenskyy had summoned Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen for an emergency meeting on March 16 in the presidential building to consider a coordinated... MORE

The meeting of the Minsk-based Contact Group, held by videoconference on March 24–26, had been expected to officially create a new negotiating forum, named the Consultative Council—in fact, an accretion to the Minsk Contact Group on the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The meeting, however, did... MORE

The COVID-19 coronavirus emergency gives Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a non-political excuse for stepping back from the plan that his envoy, Andriy Yermak, accepted from Russian presidential envoy Dmitry Kozak on March 11 in the Minsk Contact Group. The plan would institute a Consultative Council,... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.    Viktor Medvedchuk’s party, Opposition Platform–For Life (OP-FL), holds 44 seats in Ukraine’s 450-seat parliament. Despite its limited support, it is the single-largest opposition party, and the only outspoken pro-Russia fraction in the Ukrainian parliament since the July... MORE

On March 10, in Moscow, Ukraine’s leading Russophile politician Viktor Medvedchuk conferred with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Duma leaders about adding an “inter-parliamentary dimension” to the Normandy forum (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine), which is an inter-governmental process. The idea, credited to Medvedchuk, is to... MORE