In 2022, the Day of National Unity was added to Belarus’s calendar as a new official holiday (see EDM, September 28, 2022). It is celebrated on September 17, the same day the Soviet Red Army entered Poland in 1939. Soviet Belarus more than doubled in... MORE

Neither New York, nor Washington rolled out the red carpet for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He came ready for tough challenges and succeeded in making the case for sustained global and US attention to condemning and defeating Russia’s all-out aggression. Zelenskyy spoke at the opening... MORE

According to Diana Panchenko, a Ukrainian journalist considered by some to be a “pro-Russian propagandist,” most commentators seemed to fixate on one particular admission coming from Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s two-hour interview on August 17 (Zerkalo, August 17). Specifically, Panchenko referred to the widespread discussion... MORE

Since mid-July 2023, as a result of the agreement reached after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, Russia has begun to relocate Wagner Group mercenaries to Belarusian territory, raising well-reasoned concerns in the neighboring states. On August 1, Poland faced yet another provocation in which two Belarusian helicopters... MORE

On August 1, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a working visit to Kamenets district in Brest oblast, right on the border with Poland. His major task was to personally observe harvesting operations—one of Lukashenka’s hobbies derived from his professional background. Still, after having lunch with... MORE

Following Ukraine’s successful Kherson counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, the war in Ukraine has moved into the Materialschlacht, or war of attrition phase, which is rapidly depleting critical resources. Typically, when discussing resources in this sense, Ukraine is most often referring to the tanks,... MORE

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit on July 11 and 12 was held just 30 kilometers from the Belarusian border. Valer Karbalevich of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty noted that, in the summit’s final communiqué, Belarus was mentioned seven times (Svaboda, July 13). If, however, one... MORE

Questions about the drivers, participants and consequences of the Wagner Group mutiny on June 23 and 24 are set to remain unanswered as the Russian leadership finds it necessary to close that shocking page. President Vladimir Putin has executed a sharp turn from describing Yevgeny... MORE

The weekend mutiny launched by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group will have numerous wide-ranging consequences that analysts are still trying to sort out. However, more attention should be drawn to the fact that one of main reasons for this insurrection’s rapid failure was the... MORE

On May 25, the Council of the European Union ultimately renewed the temporary agreement for the bloc’s trade liberalization with Ukraine for another year (Consilium.europa.eu, May 25). The decision, which came into force on June 6, was not, however, easy to achieve as the EU’s... MORE