A glimmer of hope of a de-escalation of the Ukrainian crisis appeared on May 7, when President Vladimir Putin announced he will “ask the representatives of Southeast Ukraine [who] support federalization to delay the referendum planned for May 11, to create conditions for a dialogue.”... MORE

The April 17 Geneva Statement “on the situation in Ukraine” (by Russia, the United States, the European Union and Ukraine) has proven to be stillborn. This was preordained, since the US side accepted Russia’s definition of the conflict as one “in Ukraine” between local parties,... MORE

In sharp contrast to his handling of Western leaders in the course of the Ukrainian crisis, Vladimir Putin and the Russian occupation authorities in Crimea have consistently underestimated the Crimean Tatars and their irreplaceable leader, Mustafa Cemilev.  Putin thought he could buy off the Crimean... MORE

On May 3, Russia’s proxy forces in Ukraine’s city of Slovyansk released from captivity the military observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The German-led group of eight unarmed officers (four Germans and one each from Sweden, Denmark, Poland and the... MORE

The Geneva Joint Diplomatic Statement of April 17, 2014 (see EDM, April 30) has gone the way of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the 1997 Russia-Ukraine inter-state treaty, the 1997 and 2010 agreements on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine, and other international and bilateral documents... MORE

Belarus ignored the April 24–26 Prague summit of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP). Although the statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attributes this decision to the alleged failure of the Czech organizers to abide by the basic principles of equality and non-discrimination (https://news.tut.by/politics/396459.html),... MORE

The Russian government announced this month that it would cut developmental programs in the North Caucasus by another 13 percent, down to the equivalent of about $6 billion over the next decade. The Russian government’s program for developing the North Caucasus until 2025, which was... MORE

Russia is inadvertently helping Ukraine, the United States and the European Union to escape the trap of the April 17 Geneva Joint Diplomatic Statement “On the Situation in Ukraine” (https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/04/224957.htm). The quadripartite statement was, in fact, dead on arrival in Geneva, as Russian President Vladimir... MORE

As the Kremlin maintains measures designed to maximize pressure on the interim government in Kyiv, it also has to handle the risks of conflict escalation. A number of signs of increased tensions between both states include the “off-and-on” anti-terrorist operations in southeastern Ukraine, Russia’s renewed... MORE

On April 19, the leader of the Crimean Tatar movement, Mustafa Cemilev, returned home to his native Crimea, following his month-and-a-half-long trip abroad. During his trip, he had met with politicians and officials in Europe and in the United States, gave presentations at the North... MORE