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Latest Articles about Europe's East
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Liquidation of the INF Treaty and Ukraine’s Prospects
On March 16, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree on the “Reformation of the Defense Industrial Complex” (President.gov.ua, March 16). The document could have major implications for the development of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. The decree was initially approved on March 6, at a session... MORE
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Not an Enemy: Belarus Seeks Warmer Relations With NATO
Belarus wants to expand constructive dialogue with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on the basis of trust, equality, transparency and mutual respect. Further development of cooperation with the Alliance is limited by institutional and ideological constraints, which include the lack of necessary NATO framework... MORE
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Moscow Increasingly Ready for Major Military Confrontation
In the last several years, the Russian military has drastically increased its battle readiness in apparent preparation for a possible major conflict with an opposing massive ground force (see EDM, September 29, 2016; December 6, 2017; January 15, 2019). The massive buildup was first publicly... MORE
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The Stillborn Western Naval Convoy to the Sea of Azov: Lessons Learned
On November 26, a day after Russia attacked three small Ukrainian naval vessels attempting to pass through the Kerch Strait, German Chancellor Angela Merkel received official notification about this incident from Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko. In addition to sharing with Merkel the details of the... MORE
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Words Matter: Belarus’s Self-Awareness on the Rise
Words matter. If only because they have the power to nudge an individual to see things from a wholly new angle. In that regard, the exchange between Mikhail Babich, Russia’s ambassador to Minsk, and the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) proves particularly meaningful. Two... MORE
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Cossacks in Ukraine Back Kyiv Autocephaly; Cossacks in Russia Want It for Themselves
Cossacks in Ukraine and Russia are not the unquestioning soldiers of empire and repression that Moscow, Hollywood and the Western media routinely portray them as being. Certainly, some of the neo-Cossacks that President Vladimir Putin has created to more or less surreptitiously carry out the... MORE
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Artillery Wars in Donbas Enter a New Stage
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with defense-industry engineers and designers in Zhytomyr, on March 11, and stressed that Ukraine “needs high-precision missile weapons capable of striking targets far into the rear of the enemy” (President.gov.ua, March 11). In fact, however, the Ukrainian military has been... MORE
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Moldova’s Parliamentary Elections: One Silver Lining Amid Multiple Negative Trends (Part Two)
*To read Part One, please click here. Cleavages along ethno-linguistic and territorial lines underlying party-political divisions are an enduring characteristic of Moldova’s elections, and were again starkly evident in the parliamentary campaign just concluded, on February 24 (see Part One, EDM, March 11). Within this... MORE
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Fifth Anniversary of the Land Grab That Cost Russia Its Future
By mid-March 2014, Russian “little green men” took full control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. And on March 18, President Vladimir Putin made a jubilant address to the Russian Federation Council (upper chamber of parliament) on the “reunification” with Crimea, asserting, “In people’s hearts and minds,... MORE
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President Lukashenka’s Rhetoric and Belarus’s Future
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s seven-hour marathon with reporters, on March 1 (see EDM, March 7), continues to reverberate in the media. Most of the discussions fall within one of four discernible themes. The first has to do with Lukashenka’s expressed proposal to revise the constitution. He... MORE