Moldova’s Alliance for European Integration (AEI), governing since 2009, has all along been wracked by rivalries, pitting the two smaller parties against the larger one. The lure of Europe, and fear of the strong Communist opposition, have barely kept the AEI together thus far. Meanwhile,... MORE

Until a few days ago, Moldova was on course to sign or at least to initial an Association Agreement with the European Union this year. Moldova was outpacing the other countries in the EU’s Eastern Partnership program toward the goals of association and free trade... MORE

On February 25, President Viktor Yanukovych arrived to a frosty reception in Brussels for a European Union–Ukraine summit (Kyiv Post, February 25), less than two weeks after Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court launched investigatory proceedings into the 1996 murder of then Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, Yevhen Shcherban.... MORE

Ukraine has declared the Transnistria conflict a top priority issue of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Ukrainian chairmanship in 2013 (OSCE press release, February 19). Nominally, the OSCE has been in charge of handling this conflict since 1993. Ukrainian diplomacy harbors... MORE

While Minsk has been recently trying its best to revive its relationships with the West (see EDM, February 13), reciprocal steps have not yet been undertaken by the Western countries and international structures. On the contrary, on February 8, the EU proposed that Belarus’s human... MORE

Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has generated a flurry of activity on the country’s western flank. In charge of this ministry from late August 2012, Vladimir Makei held meetings with the heads of the diplomatic missions of European Union states and the United States (January... MORE

Ukraine has rejected Russia’s demand that it pay a fine for taking less Russian gas from pipelines last year than stipulated by contracts. Kyiv’s position is that the contracts, which it considers damaging to Ukraine, should long ago have been revised. Gazprom can now sue... MORE

More than 20 years after independence, Ukraine’s security forces are over-manned, incompetent and largely remain neo-Soviet in their operating culture. On January 18, the prosecutor’s office accused former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of being in league with Pavlo Lazarenko (prime minister in 1996–1997) for the... MORE

Perhaps the greatest recent news involving Belarus—news, which all Belarusian regardless of political stripes considered to be great—is Victoria Azarenka’s second tennis victory at the Australian Open on January 26. Her other achievements include winning the Bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London,... MORE

Shell will extract unconventional gas in Ukraine according to an agreement signed with Ukraine last week. This will be Ukraine’s first big project with a large multinational company in the oil and gas sector, and Chevron is likely to follow suit later this year. With... MORE