While it was tempting to label national consolidation in Belarus a growing trend (see EDM, April 4), the events of early April 2019 collectively suggest this qualification could have been premature. “It sometimes seems to me that our society is overcome by a slow-moving civil... MORE

Recently the Belarusian service of Deutsche Welle (DW) published an article entitled, “The Belarus Archipelago: How to Overcome the Divide in Belarusian Society?” which presents a roundup of opinions of influential Belarusians all representing one side of the divide and yet concerned about the danger... MORE

President Petro Poroshenko may be the most Moscow-hated Ukrainian politician today. The Russian state-run propaganda machine has been lambasting Poroshenko for months ahead of the March 31 presidential election, and top officials publicly joined in. According to the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev,... MORE

One of the Kremlin’s top propagandists, Dmitry Kiselev, called on March 31 for regime change in Moldova. Speaking on Russian state television, he urged russophile Moldovan President Igor Dodon’s Socialist Party and the pro-Western bloc NOW to form a situational alliance in order to replace... MORE

Russians are angry at the expanded presence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ships in the Black Sea and especially in Ukrainian ports, viewing them as a challenge to Russian power and influence there. Some in Moscow and especially in Russian-occupied Crimea are even concerned... MORE

The presidential elections in Ukraine last Sunday (March 31) were derided, denigrated and ridiculed by Russian propaganda, but they still marked a striking contrast with the severely controlled politics in Russia. In an odd historical coincidence, the last meaningful and even fateful elections Russia saw... MORE

On March 24, the United National Movement (UNM), Georgia’s former ruling party, held a party congress at which it approved Grigol Vashadze as its new chairperson (Civil.ge March 25). This does not mean, however, that UNM removed former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, who founded the party... MORE

In March, the Mardzhani Institute of History, at the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, launched work on a five-volume edition covering the history of Crimean Tatars. According to the project, its realization “should contribute to objective coverage of the Crimean Tatars’ history within... MORE

While Belarus’s self-awareness is generally on the rise (see EDM, March 19), it never stops being influenced by a wide spectrum of domestic and international affairs. Thus, a tussle between the Russian ambassador to Minsk and the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) continues to... MORE

Recurrent tensions have long been inherent in Belarusian-Russian relations. Yet, the ongoing diplomatic spat, escalating since the summer of 2018, looks increasingly different from past disagreements. Not only are Minsk and Moscow now essentially disputing the fundamentals of their relationship (see EDM, January 15), but... MORE