On February 24, in Rome, the chief executives of Russian Gazprom, Italian Edison (electricity conglomerate, 99 percent owned by Électricité de France) and Greek DEPA (national pipeline operator and gas trader) signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a pipeline route from Greece to Italy... MORE

In Kyiv, on February 22–23, with a working visit, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier portrayed the “Normandy” group’s upcoming March 3 meeting in Paris as a make-or-break event, designed to overcome the diplomatic deadlock over “the Ukraine crisis.” The diplomatic process is stuck... MORE

Negotiations in the Minsk Contact Group on political issues are so configured as to push Ukraine into recognizing the Moscow-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR), first de facto and then de jure, through local elections and a “special status.” For its part, Ukraine... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Russia’s new representative in the Minsk Contact Group “on the implementation of the peace plan in the East of Ukraine,” Boris Gryzlov, has been closely associated with President Vladimir Putin for nearly 20 years, since Putin was still... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently appointed Vladislav Surkov and Boris Gryzlov to negotiate—in two separate formats—an outcome to Russia’s war in Ukraine’s east (Censor.net.ua, January 15, 2016; TASS, December 26, 2015). Surkov and Gryzlov have long-standing personal ties to Putin and will report to... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. During the Munich Security Conference, the Barack Obama administration’s messages about Ukraine were inevitably affected by being paired with entreaties for Russian cooperation in Syria (see Part One in EDM, February 16). After Secretary of State John Kerry... MORE

Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territories, and its continuing military operations in Ukraine’s east, receded from center stage at the Munich Security Conference on February 12–14. Instead, the calamities visited upon Europe by wars in Syria and the wider Middle East (uncontrolled mass migrations into Europe,... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Western officials and commentators seem, on the whole, to overestimate Russia’s capacity and intentions to recapture Moldova by exploiting that country‘s current crisis. This overestimation partly explains the recent decisions in Washington, Brussels and Bucharest to accept billionaire... MORE

Many international observers anticipated that Russia would move to exploit the anti-government protests in Moldova in order to (as the assumptions went) “destabilize Moldova’s pro-Europe government,” “halt and derail Moldova’s European course,” or even stage a “Maidan in reverse” in Chisinau. The Kremlin was, at... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Drawing together citizens of various ethnicities, divergent political affiliations, and fluid views on Moldova’s ultimate orientation (see Part One, EDM, January 28), recent massive social protests in Chisinau could mark the birth of a Moldovan civic identity, one... MORE