
Latest articles from Vladimir Socor

Minsk Armistice Implementation in Ukraine Officially Postponed
Meeting on November 6, in Berlin, the ministers of foreign affairs of the “Normandy” group (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine) finally acknowledged that the Minsk armistice cannot be implemented by this year’s end, as originally intended. They agreed to postpone the implementation into next year, without... MORE

Moldovan Billionaire Overthrows Coalition Government From Within (Part Two)
Moldova is experiencing a political coup, executed by billionaire Vlad Plahotniuc’s team within the “pro-Europe” coalition government, and coordinated with leftist and pro-Russia parties in the parliament and outside it. The aim of this operation is to expand and guarantee Plahotniuc’s control of Moldova’s state... MORE

Moldovan Billionaire Overthrows Coalition Government From Within (Part One)
Moldova seems about to become the second state in Europe’s East, after Georgia, to be captured by the wealthiest local businessman—in Moldova’s case, the billionaire Vlad Plahotniuc. He and Georgia’s Bidzina Ivanishvili share some common traits, including their lack of commitment to a European orientation.... MORE

The Sine Qua Non Safeguards For Donetsk-Luhansk Elections
On October 27 in the Minsk Contact Group, the Ukrainian delegation presented a concept document to serve as a basis for the “law on local elections in the temporarily occupied areas” of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (see accompanying article). President Petro Poroshenko has personally... MORE

Minsk Process Refloats Donetsk-Luhansk Election Plans
Recasting Russia’s armed proxies as democratic mandate-holders—and tutoring them to look like that on an election’s schedule—is an innovation of the Minsk armistice and ensuing negotiations on the status of the occupied territories in Ukraine’s east. Russia had never seriously attempted to sell this approach... MORE

Putin Wants Ukraine to Renegotiate Terms Directly With Donetsk-Luhansk
Ukraine held local elections, on October 25, throughout the country, including most of the government-controlled territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, but not in the Russian-controlled territory of those provinces. There, the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR) prevented the holding of local... MORE

Moldovan Billionaire Plahotniuc Gaining More Political Power
In a country as bereft of leadership talent as Moldova turned out to be, Liberal-Democrat Party leader Vlad Filat’s resignation over corruption charges and his arrest leaves a vacuum in its wake. The charges against Filat, in the form in which they were proffered, have... MORE

Moldovan Political Leader Filat Arrested in Intra-Coalition Coup
Moldova is theoretically a parliamentary republic, but its parliament was in recess for two and a half months, hiding away from the economy’s collapse, uncontrollable corruption, loss of the political system’s legitimacy, and regime-change movements competing against each other. Western embassies in Chisinau also seem... MORE

Russian Hybrid War, Euro-Hybrid Democracy in Ukraine’s East (Part Two)
*To read Part One, please click here. Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande have prevailed on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to accommodate pseudo-elections in the Russian-controlled territory into a special Ukrainian law. Poroshenko himself, and the Ukrainian body... MORE

Russian Hybrid War, Euro-Hybrid Democracy in Ukraine’s East (Part One)
Moscow has instructed the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR-LPR) to postpone the local “elections” that were scheduled for October 18 and November 1 in that Russian-controlled territory of Ukraine. Those elections would have been staged separately from Ukraine’s own local elections, which are scheduled... MORE