In early November, journalists and analysts convened in Tallinn, Estonia, for the fifth annual meeting of the “Rubicon” conference fully devoted to issues pertaining to Belarus. This year, the major topic was “Belarus as a factor of regional security and stability.” The participants were unable... MORE

Germany’s Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hosted a meeting of his Russian, French, and Ukrainian counterparts (“Normandy” group), on November 6, in Berlin, to lift the December deadline on the implementation of the Minsk armistice in Ukraine. This move, a foregone conclusion, may turn the... MORE

Meeting on November 6, in Berlin, the ministers of foreign affairs of the “Normandy” group (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine) finally acknowledged that the Minsk armistice cannot be implemented by this year’s end, as originally intended. They agreed to postpone the implementation into next year, without... MORE

Russian experts have reacted to the recent establishment of a group in the Ukrainian parliament called “For the Free Caucasus.” One of them, Vladislav Gulevich, has predicted that the Ukrainian political forces that want to detach the North Caucasus from Russia will fail because Ukraine... MORE

The West’s major centers of power—the European Union and the United States—have recently announced significant adjustments to their Belarus policies; and the underpinnings and implications of those changes are now being hotly debated by the Belarusian opposition and anti-regime analysts and commentators. In particular, the... MORE

Moldova is experiencing a political coup, executed by billionaire Vlad Plahotniuc’s team within the “pro-Europe” coalition government, and coordinated with leftist and pro-Russia parties in the parliament and outside it. The aim of this operation is to expand and guarantee Plahotniuc’s control of Moldova’s state... MORE

Moldova seems about to become the second state in Europe’s East, after Georgia, to be captured by the wealthiest local businessman—in Moldova’s case, the billionaire Vlad Plahotniuc. He and Georgia’s Bidzina Ivanishvili share some common traits, including their lack of commitment to a European orientation.... MORE

On October 27 in the Minsk Contact Group, the Ukrainian delegation presented a concept document to serve as a basis for the “law on local elections in the temporarily occupied areas” of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (see accompanying article). President Petro Poroshenko has personally... MORE

Recasting Russia’s armed proxies as democratic mandate-holders—and tutoring them to look like that on an election’s schedule—is an innovation of the Minsk armistice and ensuing negotiations on the status of the occupied territories in Ukraine’s east. Russia had never seriously attempted to sell this approach... MORE

In recent months, a debate arose about the formation of a Muslim Battalion in Ukraine (see EDM, September 5). This was soon followed, in the Russian media, by rumors about the Crimean Tatar leadership’s alleged links with the Islamic State (IS). On October 5, 2015,... MORE