The Crimean government and parliament are completing preparations for the plebiscite scheduled to be held on March 16, leading to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and possible annexation by Russia.Heading the Crimean government and parliament in this effort are two Greater-Russia nationalist... MORE

Russia has seized Crimea from Ukraine by military force, wholly unprovoked, and without having to fire a shot (see EDM, February 28, March 3–7, 10). Furthermore, Russia has “legislated” its own right to intervene militarily in any part of Ukraine by unilateral decision of Russia’s... MORE

From day one of Russia’s assault on Ukraine (ongoing since February 27), Ukrainian government leaders, politicians and diplomats have continually invoked the 1994 Budapest Memorandum signed by Ukraine, the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom. That Memorandum is widely believed to provide security “guarantees”... MORE

On March 2, Ukrainian interim president Oleksandr Turchynov appointed new heads of state administrations (governors) in several oblasts in eastern and southern Ukraine (Ukraiynska Pravda, March 2, 3). The main cities in Ukraine’s southern and eastern oblasts have most recently experienced pro-Russian, potentially separatist demonstrations,... MORE

In Ukraine’s case, democratic theory was at no time a valid premise for assessing the stability, internal legitimacy, or indeed the logic of the country’s political order. That order functioned to a large extent through informal arrangements among interest groups that coalesced around Ukraine’s “oligarchs”... MORE

President Vladimir Putin announced today (March 4) that Russia’s ground troops, deployed across Crimea since March 1, have “reinforced the protection of our installations” (“obiekty”) on that territory of Ukraine. The Russian president’s remarks neither acknowledge nor dispute Ukraine’s sovereignty in Crimea. However, Putin depicted... MORE

In the pre-dawn hours on February 27 in Simferopol, some 50 heavily armed Russian men in camouflage uniforms without identification marks seized the parliament and government buildings of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, which forms a part of Ukraine. That squad is presumed to be Russian... MORE

On February 25, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (national parliament) chairman and acting head of state, Oleksandr Turchynov, appointed Oleh Makhnitsky as acting general prosecutor, with instructions to “rebuff separatist tendencies” in parts of south-eastern Ukraine and Crimea. According to Turchynov as he introduced the appointment, separatists... MORE

Ukraine has embarked on regime transition. The interim leadership now confronts an entirely new mix of challenges to national and civil security, of greater complexity and intensity than anything in the country’s experience since 1991. Thousands of participants in the recent protest movement are still... MORE

Turning Ukraine into a federation of regional units is an idea that Moscow airs almost predictably, when facing a net loss of Russian influence over Ukraine. “Federalizing” Ukraine traditionally connotes, from Moscow’s perspective, undermining the authority of the central government in Kyiv in relation to... MORE