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Latest Articles about Europe's East
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The Politics of Reform: Saakashvili’s Odesa Mission (Part Two)
*To read Part One, please click here. While Mikheil Saakashvili served as governor of Ukraine’s Odesa Province (May 2015–November 2016), the region presented the former Georgian president with hurdles not only to system reforms but even to rational management as such. Those obstacles included:... MORE
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The Politics of Reform: Saakashvili’s Odesa Mission (Part One)
Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has accepted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s offer to chair the Executive Committee of Ukraine’s National Council for Reforms (Ukrinform, May 7). Taking up the new challenge, Saakashvili promised to draw on the experience of his universally recognized achievements in Georgia... MORE
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Belarusian Victory Day Parade in Midst of Pandemic: A Propaganda Coup Against Moscow
In the evening of May 6, the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) deprived Alexei Kruchinin, a journalist from Russian TV’s First Channel, of accreditation, effectively sending him and his camera crew packing (Tut.by, May 6). The reasoning behind this move was a four-minute-long TV... MORE
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Baltic Pipe Will Undermine Moscow’s Geopolitical Hopes for Nord Stream Two
Moscow has been rather explicit in that it wants to use the trans-Baltic Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline to more aggressively dictate gas prices and transit conditions to Ukraine. But even as the project approaches completion, despite United States sanctions, it may ultimately fail... MORE
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Belarusians Worry About the Economy
Belarus has been preoccupied in recent days with President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s decision not to cancel this year’s annual May 9 Victory Day military parade, which marks arguably the country’s most important public holiday. “I must say that we cannot cancel the parade,” declared Lukashenka on... MORE
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The Cambridge Five Helped Moscow Fight Ukrainian Nationalists
President Vladimir Putin has spent years trying to turn the Soviet victory in World War II into the central fact of Russian history. As a result, it is no surprise that Russian writers, with the encouragement of the Russian security services, have launched a variety... MORE
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Russian Loan Offer Exposes Moldova’s Internal Faultlines
In mid-April, Russia offered Moldova, at the latter’s insistence, an inter-governmental loan of €200 million ($217 million) on soft terms. Moldova’s Socialist-led government had planned this loan mainly for road construction, before the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic broke out. At present and in the near-to-medium term,... MORE
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Russian Loan for Moldova: A Strange Inter-Governmental Agreement
Russia and Moldova signed an inter-governmental loan agreement on April 17, in Moscow, at Chisinau’s insistence. Chisinau had initially sought a Russian loan for infrastructure development, but it may have to spend these Russian funds (along with Western assistance) to mitigate Moldova’s current fiscal emergency... MORE
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The E40 Waterway: The Polish Dimension
The E40 Waterway is a proposed 2,000-kilometer inland shipping route that, if completed, would connect the Baltic with the Black Sea and run through Poland, Belarus and Ukraine (Minskdialogue.by, April 20; see EDM, February 18, April 28). The project stagnated following the completion of its... MORE
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The Political Dimension of Russia’s Spy Games in Ukraine
Since the beginning of the undeclared Russian-Ukrainian war in early 2014, the secret services of both countries have been key players in the conflict, particularly due to its “hybrid” nature. Covert operations, sabotage and espionage naturally all increased significantly compared to the pre-war years. Russian... MORE