The Verkhovna Rada’s (Ukrainian parliament) committee charged with national security and defense delayed the progress, on March 19, of Draft Law 8068 “On National Security”  (Rada.gov.ua, accessed March 21), which had been submitted to the legislature by President Petro Poroshenko on February 28.  The Rada... MORE

A memorial to the Lutskevich brothers was installed, on March 13, in downtown Minsk. It consists of a large engraved stone commemorating two houses where, in 1896–1906, Anton and Ivan Lutskevich lived with their families (Tut.by, March 13). Both led the Belarusian national movement and... MORE

In late February, Tom Post, editorial advisor at the Finnish and Baltic edition of Forbes, and Arkady Shteimans, referred to as the publisher of Forbes in Latvia, Estonia and Finland, paid a visit to Minsk. In this regard, Dev.by, an online publication about the Belarusian... MORE

Four years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it is more than obvious that the peninsula has been forcibly integrated into the contemporary Russian identity. All “achievements” claimed by Moscow since March 2014 are linked to the “reunification” of Crimea with Russia. Precisely because of that,... MORE

The Minsk city administration allowed the opposition-based Organizing Committee (OC) of the centennial celebration of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) (see EDM, January 25) to organize a meeting and a concert downtown, at a square park adjacent to the capital city’s massive opera house. Both... MORE

The ataman (head) of the Kuban Cossack voisko (army), Nikolay Doluda, reported that a National Guard platoon made up entirely of Cossacks is being created in Krasnodar Krai. This Cossack National Guard platoon will eventually be scaled up to a company, a battalion or even... MORE

Ukraine’s national oil and natural gas company, Naftogaz Ukrainy, claimed a final victory in a four-year dispute over gas supply and transit with Russia’s Gazprom. The Stockholm arbitration court, where Naftogaz and Gazprom sued each other in 2014, last December obliged Naftogaz to pay much... MORE

Kyiv claims Russia has been siphoning off natural gas from offshore fields it seized from Ukraine in 2014, after forcibly annexing Crimea. The Ukrainian government detailed its claims in a memo submitted to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg.... MORE

If there is a common refrain to be found in the continual stream of ostensibly disparate but newsworthy developments related to Belarus, it is the country’s lingering quest for national unity. Lately, this overarching narrative has been entangled in Belarus’s Olympic triumphs in PyeongChang. First,... MORE

Moscow’s appetite in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov has not decreased after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russia has gradually advanced its presence into significant areas of the exclusive maritime economic zone of Ukraine, which, in accordance with international law, is... MORE