Belarus held parliamentary elections on November 17, resulting in a near-complete turnover of the legislature. Only 30 lawmakers from the previous convocation have retained their seats. The official turnout was recorded at 77.2 percent, with the lowest turnout registered in the capital city of Minsk—63... MORE

Chinese billionaire and co-founder/former executive chairman of the Alibaba Group, Jack Ma, visited Ukraine on November 7. During his trip, which, started in Kharkiv, he attended the Kyiv International Economic Forum, where he delivered a keynote speech (Kh.suspilne.media, November 7). While in Kharkiv, Ma met... MORE

Almost one year ago, on November 25, 2018, two small Ukrainian Gyurza-M-class gunboats, together with a tug, attempted to cross from the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov, where Ukraine controls two major port cities: Mariupol and Berdyansk. The Ukrainian... MORE

On November 14, during the Third International Conference for Maritime Security, in Odesa, Ukrainian Navy commander Admiral Ihor Voronchenko said that a Russian Tu-22M3 (Backfire) had been observed simulating the launch of a missile strike on this coastal city (Dumskaya, November 14). Voronchenko added that... MORE

Introduction This summer, Ukraine became another venue for competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In August, then-U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton held several meetings with the Ukrainian leadership; according to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, the hurriedly arranged... MORE

As spirited debates over Russia-Belarus integration rage on, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka traveled to Vienna. Considering that the sanctions the European Union had imposed on Belarus in 2006 were only lifted in 2016, Lukashenka’s visit to Austria was symbolically seen as “cutting a window into... MORE

On November 13, Ukraine’s parliament (the Verkhovna Rada), in its first reading, supported lifting the farmland sales moratorium (Rada.gov.ua, November 13). No one doubts that the bill will be signed into law by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before the end of the year. If so, this... MORE

On October 27, several thousand gathered in downtown Elista, the capital of Russia’s Buddhist republic of Kalmykia, to protest the appointment of Dmitry Trapeznikov as mayor of the city. Trapeznikov is a former politician from the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), one of the two... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The collapse of Moldova’s governing coalition (in office from June to November 2019) puts an end to joint governance by political and cultural opposites—an experiment unprecedented for fractured Moldova and without par in contemporary Europe (see Part One... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s October 20 interview, in which he referred to three wars that raged in Belarus as “not our wars,” continues to reverberate in both Russian and Belarusian media and social networks. A reprimand to Lukashenka issued by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (see... MORE