Utter confusion surrounds Ukraine’s just-adopted law on the “special procedure of local self-administration in individual districts in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.” Pursuant to the September 5 ceasefire protocol, President Petro Poroshenko initiated this law, his administration drafted it, and the parliament adopted it on... MORE

After annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, Russia is now rebuilding its Black Sea Fleet (BSF) to ensure its regional dominance, to exclude all rivals, and to lay the foundation for further external power projection, threatening other littorals like Romania and Bulgaria. In April 2014, Putin directed... MORE

As Ukrainian forces use the recently signed ceasefire to pause, regroup and rearm after suffering heavy losses in the past several months, officials in Kyiv are a long way from accepting the current status quo in the east as yet another frozen conflict (see EDM,... MORE

Ukraine’s law on the “special procedure of local self-administration in individual districts in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces” (Ukraiynska Pravda, September 16; see Part One of this article) seeks to retain at least some means of influence and avenues of dialogue between Kyiv and local... MORE

On September 16, the Ukrainian parliament approved a “Law on the special procedure of local self-administration in individual districts in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces” (Russian version’s terminology: poryadok, samo-upravlenie, raiony). Those two provinces of Ukraine are now, de facto, partitioned into Russian-controlled and Ukrainian-controlled... MORE

Persistent rumors have existed for some time about the involvement of Chechens in pro-Russian military groups fighting in eastern Ukraine (see EDM, July 18). A significant portion of the information about Chechens fighting in Ukraine was unverified; indeed, it sometimes seemed the Ukrainian army was... MORE

If turmoil in Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland comprising the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, continues, next year will be the third year without economic growth for the country. This is especially detrimental for an emerging economy that has not yet overcome the devastating effects of... MORE

Russia’s war against Ukraine is a multi-dimensional conflict undertaking. It has come to a standstill on the battlefield in Ukraine, but continues nonetheless in its military aspect (below the combat threshold) and in its political, economic, propaganda, and cultural aspects. Russia’s overall objective is to... MORE

In the wake of worsening Russian-Western relations over Ukraine, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is holding Rapid Trident military exercises, on September 16–26, in Ukraine near Lviv. According to European Command (EUCOM) spokesman Gregory Hicks, the drills will bring together about 1,300 troops from... MORE

Mihai Balan, director of Moldova’s Intelligence and Security Service (SIS), says the organization has evidence that Moscow is planning to stage provocations in his country in the coming weeks, in advance of the Moldovan November parliamentary elections. Russia will utilize not only traditional sources of... MORE