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Latest Articles about Europe's East
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Blinken’s Debut in Ukraine: A Case for Managing Expectations (Part One)
Antony Blinken is visiting Kyiv today (May 6) on his first bilateral visit as US Secretary of State to a European country (Ukraiynska Pravda, May 6). This choice should have been foreordained in view of Ukraine’s pivotal significance to the power balance in Europe and... MORE
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The Thorny Road to the Kremlin’s Desired Yalta-2021
Russian top officials—in particular, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (RIA Novosti, April 27) and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev (Kommersant, April 8)—have for weeks been talking about the deepening crisis in Russia’s relations with the United States while at the same time expressing some hope that... MORE
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Belarusian State-Run TV Scores Propaganda Victories
In his April 29 interview to Euronews, Belarus’s Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei had this to say about the crackdown on the protest movement that followed the August 9 presidential elections: “Perhaps the authorities sometimes acted too harshly. But this was an appropriate reaction to […]... MORE
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Making Sense of the ‘Semenchenko’s PMC’ Affair
On March 24, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) announced it had exposed and impeded the activity of two illegal private military companies (PMC)—Doncorp Ukraine and its parent entity, Donbas Battalion Corporation. A pair of former Ukrainian people’s deputies—the former commander of the Donbas Battalion,... MORE
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Ukrainians Fear Moscow May Use Their Co-Ethnics in Russia in Provocation to Restart War
A recent wave of arrests of ethnic Ukrainians across the Russian Federation for supposedly organizing extremist groups and planning terrorist attacks has sparked fears in Ukraine that Vladimir Putin may seek to exploit these incidents to stage a provocation inside Russia. Such a scheme would... MORE
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Role of Airborne Troops in Russia’s Military Buildup in Crimea
At the end of each winter training cycle, the Russian Armed Forces typically hold extensive readiness checks in the month of April. So unsurprisingly, on April 6, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the Russian military would carry out 4,048 such snap exercises at 101... MORE
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One-on-One With Putin: A Reckless Adventure for Zelenskyy (Part Two)
*To read Part One, please click here. “We should not let Mr. Zelenskyy and his team off the hook, but let them twist [wriggle, squirm] there,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently told reporters (RIA Novosti, April 28). This is Lavrov’s own style of signaling... MORE
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Putin Pauses, but Russia’s Propensity for Trouble-Making Persists
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent plan to emerge from his extended self-isolation with new energy did not quite work out as expected, and he clearly needed to pause. Last week (April 28), United States President Joseph Biden touted his achievements at the symbolic 100-day mark... MORE
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One-on-One With Putin: A Reckless Adventure for Zelenskyy (Part One)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be holding no cards in the event of a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy is known to believe that he holds the card of his personal charm and the moral card, but those do not count with... MORE
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Escalation Around Donbas: Is the Ukrainian Army Prepared for Full-Scale Russian Aggression?
Military tensions along the Russian-Ukrainian border reached a near-boiling point in recent weeks. During March–April, Moscow amassed as many as 110,000 troops and 56 permanent-readiness battalion tactical groups (BTG) close to eastern Ukrainian territory, according to the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of... MORE