At the end of last year, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko (June 2014–May 2019) announced in an interview that, back in 2018, he had initiated a special operation to detain mercenaries belonging to the notorious Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner Group (News.ru, December 31,... MORE

Back on August 17, 2020, shocked by a week of powerful post-election protests, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka openly conceded he had overstayed his welcome at the helm of power and promised the workers of the rebellious Wheel Tractor Factory a new national constitution and early... MORE

“Remember, I said a year ago […] that perhaps a time will come when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and I will have to stand next to each other and shoot back. And you took it for a joke. But you now see how life has... MORE

The Belorysy i Rynok newspaper asked three prominent Belarusian analysts to predict the country’s near future. But two out of three only shared observations, not forecasts. Thus, Piotr Rudkovsky, head of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, observed that for any political regime, creating an... MORE

What will happen in Belarus, and when? Any attempt at addressing this question would need to invoke such variables as the level of unity of Belarusian society, actions of the political regime, the health of the Belarusian economy, the role of Moscow, and the relative... MORE

On December 29, 2020, Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko stated that Russian energy supplies to Belarus in 2021 will be purchased under “favorable terms,” thus confirming that the months-long negotiations between the two countries had concluded (BelTA, December 29, 2020). The details of the bilateral... MORE

At the beginning of 2020, Belarus was becoming increasingly assertive and willing to resist Russian pressure tactics (see EDM, January 14, 2020). And that assessment remained valid at least until late May. Against the background of Belarus and Russia’s lingering oil price dispute, US Secretary... MORE

Popular narrative tropes are not always accurate predictors of how a story will ultimately develop. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the former presidential hopeful and a person believed by many to have won the presidential elections of August 9, is widely seen as a positive character in the... MORE

At the December 2 virtual summit of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), President Alyaksandr Lukashenka once again expressed his view that the protest movement in his country is a rebellion masterminded by the West. He called the behavior of Poland and Lithuania particularly... MORE

On November 26, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Ihor Kyzym and presented him with a note of protest, expressing strong concerns over the series of “anti-Belarusian actions” held near Belarus’s embassy in Kyiv and its honorary consulate... MORE