Moldova’s wealthiest businessman and shadowy politician, Vladimir Plahotniuc, finally stepped into the limelight on January 13 and announced his candidacy for the post of prime minister (Unimedia, IPN, January 13). Almost overnight, he assembled a heterogeneous collection of satellite parties and splinter factions to ensure... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Moldovan billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc, the de facto head of the Democratic Party of Moldova, has, over the past year, built up a strong power base under the “pro-Europe” coalition government’s cover. To achieve this, he has amassed a... MORE

The political influence of billionaire businessman Vladimir Plahotniuc expanded seemingly unstoppably in Moldova’s state institutions and political system during the year just past (see EDM, October 19, 2015; November 3, 4, 19, 20, 2015; January 11, 2016). At the turn of 2015–2016, Plahotniuc moved to... MORE

Literally in the final days of 2015, a new political constellation has emerged on the center-right of Moldova’s party spectrum that might yet open a way out from state failure. But such a rescue, while still possible, requires a certain time for organizational work. For... MORE

Russia and Belarus have some of the closest relations in the post-Soviet space. Both are members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). And together, the two countries make up the Union State.... MORE

Shortly before its residents rang in the New Year, the Russian-annexed peninsula of Crimea again found itself entirely without Ukrainian electricity. As in November, this was caused by unidentified saboteurs who blew up a power transmission line tower in Ukraine’s Kherson province, which borders Crimea.... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s visit to Moscow, which had been scheduled for November 25–26 and then postponed, eventually occurred on December 15. By most accounts, the contentious issues facing Lukashenka and his counterpart, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, were not resolved: the two sides neither agreed... MORE

Russia’s conflict undertaking in Ukraine’s east fits within patterns familiar from other post-Soviet conflicts, initiated by Russia and conserved on Russian terms with international assistance (see EDM, December 17). However, Russia’s war in Ukraine’s east involves a number of major political and military innovations in... MORE

Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine’s east—directly and by proxy—has saddled Ukraine with a “frozen” conflict in its Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. The parallel situation in Crimea also qualifies as a “frozen conflict,” insofar as Russia’s forcible annexation is not recognized internationally, and in that sense... MORE

On December 7, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, gave her Nobel lecture in Stockholm (Naviny.by, December 7). The lecture was delivered in Russian, the language in which Alexievich writes. In it, she first dwelled on her post–World... MORE