On May 11, self-declared “people’s councils” purported to hold “referendums” in approximately 20 or 25 towns or parts thereof, held by armed rebels in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (Donbas) (see EDM, May 9). The organizers claimed high turnouts and an overwhelming affirmative answer to... MORE

For all their lack of capacity (let alone legitimacy) to organize any kind of voting, pro-Russia forces in Ukraine’s Donbas are proceeding with secession referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces on May 11 as scheduled.Russian President Vladimir Putin had, on May 7, offered to... MORE

As anticipated (see EDM, May 1), pro-Russia groups have failed to organize the secession referendums, planned for May 11 in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (Donbas). Those marginal groups lack a social, electoral, or organizational base for holding anything resembling referendums. Their paramilitary units have... MORE

The April 17 Geneva Statement “on the situation in Ukraine” (by Russia, the United States, the European Union and Ukraine) has proven to be stillborn. This was preordained, since the US side accepted Russia’s definition of the conflict as one “in Ukraine” between local parties,... MORE

The Geneva Joint Diplomatic Statement of April 17, 2014 (see EDM, April 30) has gone the way of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the 1997 Russia-Ukraine inter-state treaty, the 1997 and 2010 agreements on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine, and other international and bilateral documents... MORE

Russia is inadvertently helping Ukraine, the United States and the European Union to escape the trap of the April 17 Geneva Joint Diplomatic Statement “On the Situation in Ukraine” (https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/04/224957.htm). The quadripartite statement was, in fact, dead on arrival in Geneva, as Russian President Vladimir... MORE

Pro-Russia armed groups fanned out during April 11–14 across Donetsk oblast, capturing the seats of authority in town after town: Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Makiyivka, Mariupol, Horlivka, Khartsyzk, Yenakiyeve, Zhdanivka, and several others.  This is a conflict coordinated from Moscow, designed to create faits accomplis on the... MORE

Moscow seems to be preparing the atmosphere for a possible military intervention in Ukraine’s eastern regions. Russia could, if it deemed expedient, intervene there with troops in some form or other, as it has just done in Crimea. But, more likely, Moscow would leverage the... MORE

The crisis over Crimea has confirmed and further developed a paradigm of Russian re-expansion and Western self-denial in Europe’s East. This paradigm operates as follows (continued from Part One, EDM, April 4):5. Europe’s East consigned to Grey Zone. The United States, the European Union and... MORE

On April 1–2 in Brussels, the Ukraine-NATO Commission held a ministerial-level meeting to discuss the conflict with pronounced military dimensions between Russia and Ukraine (UNIAN, April 2).Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, however, would not use the term Russia-Ukraine conflict. Similarly, they have long... MORE