*Read Part One Here. Ukraine’s leadership and public opinion are adamant in ruling out land-for-peace tradeoffs with Russia. Leadership statements and public opinion surveys testify to this attitude. Such tradeoffs have, nevertheless, been proposed in a recent RAND Corporation report (Rand.org, January 2023). Ukrainian territorial... MORE

The boldest prescription yet for a United States–abetted defeat of Ukraine by Russia—and, ipso facto, a Western defeat—has come out of one unit of the RAND Corporation in Washington, DC. It envisages large territorial concessions by Ukraine to Russia—in effect, more and even more land... MORE

*Read Part One here. *Read Part Two here. *Read Part Three here. Russia, immersed in its war against Ukraine, does not currently have Moldova in its crosshairs, at least as long as Ukraine holds out. Russia has adopted a reactive posture regarding Moldova. The Kremlin seems... MORE

*Read Part One here. *Read Part Two here. The European Union has recently granted Moldova the status of candidate country for EU membership (Consilium.europa.eu, June 24, 2022). By way of consequence, the security arrangements of an EU candidate country cannot be left to an organization... MORE

*Read Part One here. The “5+2” forum on Transnistria was designed in 2005 based on the old model of the European Concert, updated as Euro-Atlantic: to settle a local conflict through negotiations among great powers. Similarly, the negotiating formats on the conflicts in Karabakh (1994–2020),... MORE

Russia’s war against Ukraine has dealt the coup de grâce to the “5+2” negotiations on the settlement of conflict in Transnistria, the forum where Russia and Ukraine sit next to each other. Moscow and Kyiv have been seated formally at the top of the table,... MORE

In their parallel statements on January 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov added some new elements and emphases to Russia’s case for its war against Ukraine. Their statements underscore the Kremlin’s double rationale for this war: a national war in the... MORE

The Ukrainian Presidential Office envisages a system of international security guarantees vis-a-vis Russia that would answer Kyiv’s post-war requirements. The guarantees would be provided by willing North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members countries, albeit, at the moment, short of NATO membership, this would potentially clear... MORE

Click here to read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Moldova is the last remaining target of Russia’s “special status” playbook, in this case in Transnistria. This is also the last conflict in which the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) barely clings... MORE

Click here to read Part One and Part Two. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has lost relevance and even access to the conflict-resolution process between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh. The OSCE had, in 1994, mandated a haphazardly formed group of... MORE