Presidents Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin met in the Russian resort town of Sochi, on February 7, to resolve the multi-layered energy pricing disputes between them (see EDM, February 11). These talks were ultimately not as fruitless as their numerous summits in 2019 (Tut.by, February... MORE

On February 11, in Chisinau, President Igor Dodon assembled Moldova’s ambassadors accredited abroad and delivered policy guidelines to them in two speeches: one to the plenary conference and another to Moldova’s ambassadors accredited to European institutions, European Union member states and other Western countries. These... MORE

Bilateral Ukrainian-Turkish cooperation in the defense sector continues unabated even after the consequential 2019 elections in both countries. On January 23, the Joint Ukrainian-Turkish Commission on Defense-Industrial Cooperation met again, in Kyiv (Ukrainian Government, January 23). This time, the Turkish delegation was headed by the... MORE

As hard as it is to believe, given President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s long record of successfully wrenching concessions on energy prices from Moscow, Belarus’s relationship with Russia may finally be approaching a critical turning point. On February 7, Lukashenka was in Sochi to continue the negotiations... MORE

The stalemate in Belarusian-Russian negotiations over oil and natural gas continues. Following President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s emotional speech in the city of Shklov, in which he openly complained that Moscow was only willing to make concessions in exchange for Belarus losing its sovereignty (see EDM, January... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed Dmitry Kozak as deputy head of the presidential administration and principal representative for policy toward Ukraine, on top of Kozak’s continuing mission as presidential envoy for Moldovan affairs. Kozak will be handling the conflicts in Donbas and Transnistria, as... MORE

Belarus is officially Russia’s closest ally. In addition to joint membership in the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO, a regional defense alliance) and Eurasian Economic Union, Belarus and Russia together form a Union State—a loose confederative structure initially intended to transform into a federation... MORE

From Russia’s perspective, the conflicts it has itself instigated in the greater Black Sea region are strictly separate cases. Moscow regards the conflicts over Ukraine’s Crimea and Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia as settled and closed. By contrast, Russia seeks political settlements to the active... MORE

Since the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation’s relations with its immediate Black Sea neighbors—the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine—have veered from frigid to open conflict. Russia engaged in a brief war in 2008 with Georgia; then, six years later,... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   Kyiv and Moscow finalized a bilateral deal to transport Russian natural gas to Europe through Ukrainian territory (see Part One in EDM, January 22). Although the new five-year agreement, signed on December 30, 2019, represented a compromise... MORE