Despite the apparent deadlock in armed clashes in eastern Ukraine, an idea to bringing together the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, together with their peers from Belarus and Kazakhstan as well as the leaders of France and Germany, gained momentum at the end of last... MORE

On January 1, 2015, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, along with Armenia, co-launched the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The founding treaty of this economic bloc?whose genesis is widely attributed to Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev, although it has become the key focus of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy... MORE

The armistice in Ukraine’s east affords Russia a breathing pause to institutionalize the secessionist Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics.” The “Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)” is even less institutionalized and more chaotic than the nearby Donetsk republic (“DPR”). Various armed formations in the “LPR” are operating,... MORE

On January 1, 2015, a military unit of the “Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)” ambushed and killed the commander of the LPR’s rapid-reaction battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Aleksandr Bednov (“Batman”) and six of his men. They were shelled from both sides of the road while traveling in two... MORE

Alexandre Grigolashvili, a Georgian volunteer who was fighting on the Ukrainian side in that country’s ongoing war against Russia-sponsored separatists, was killed in action on December 19, 2014 (Channel 1 TV, December 20, 2014). On December 20, Georgia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) issued a statement... MORE

In the second half of December 2014, five interrelated themes engaged media attention: the last salvos of the Belarus-Russia trade war (see EDM, December 3, 2014); Russia’s reactions to Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s statements regarding this war and his trip to Kyiv; Lukashenka’s speech at... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. In order to stimulate centrifugal processes in Ukraine, the Kremlin needs the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” to remain within Ukraine’s political system pro forma, albeit outside Kyiv’s control de facto.... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Moscow proposes to resolve the conflict in Donbas (eastern Ukrainian region encompassing the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces) by turning the Russian-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk territories into proto-states, to be linked with the rest of Ukraine in a quasi-confederal... MORE

On December 4, Major-General Oleksandr Rozmazninov, of Ukraine’s General Staff, reported a Russian deployment of the Iskander-M tactical missile system to Crimea. (Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, December 4). This and other Russian military deployments to the annexed peninsula have prompted debates on the shift in the military... MORE

The Ukrainian crisis started late last year, when then–Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych suddenly refused to sign the long-planned association agreement with the European Union and ordered the brutal dispersal of student protesters in downtown Kyiv. The chain of events that followed led to the popular... MORE