Ukraine has secured a big loan from the IMF in order to stabilize its finances amid the global crisis. To qualify for the loan, parties in parliament agreed to set aside their differences and pass stabilization laws proposed by President Viktor Yushchenko. Thanks to this,... MORE

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) is targeting the president’s former Orange ally, the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT), as part of a strategy to undermine Tymoshenko’s popularity ahead of the January 2010 presidential elections. The campaign uses methods similar to those used by former President Leonid... MORE

Since the mid-1990s, Belarus has frequently cited its economic successes: high growth rates (over 10 percent in the first half of 2008), impressive increases in industrial output, and an economy that has managed to thrive even while closely controlled by the state. President Alyaksandr Lukashenka... MORE

The leaders of Subcarpathian Ruthenians (pidkarpatski rusyny) have urged Kyiv to grant autonomous status to their native area, Ukraine’s westernmost Transcarpathian Region. There was no official reaction from the Ukrainian government, but several parties accused them of separatism; and a criminal investigation has been launched.... MORE

On October 13 the foreign ministers of the 27 member-states of the European Union met in Luxemburg and agreed to lift sanctions on travel for 36 high-ranking members of the Belarusian government, including President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, for a trial period of six months. The decision... MORE

Moscow has claimed that Kyiv’s recent decision to banish several Russian TV channels from Ukrainian cable TV networks was a violation of bilateral accords and of the rights of Russian speakers. Kyiv, on the other hand, says that the Russian channels in question violated Ukrainian... MORE

For the first time since the Soviet era, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet undertook an offensive operation in August of this year when it attacked Georgia, landing Russian ground forces in Abkhazia. The Russian Fleet, mainly based in Sevastopol, misused Ukraine’s territory and abused Ukraine’s neutrality... MORE

Like the political crisis in the spring of 2007, the crisis unfolding since September has placed great strains on law enforcement agencies (see EDM, June 1, 2007). On April 2, 2007, and now again on October 8, the president disbanded parliament. In the spring of... MORE

On October 9 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko disbanded parliament and scheduled an early parliamentary election for December 7. This was the result of the breakup of the ruling coalition of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc (NUNS) and the bloc of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (BYT)... MORE

With President Viktor Yushchenko’s disbanding of the Ukrainian parliament on October 8 and legal squabbles over new elections, the continuing Ukrainian-Russian negotiations over 2009 gas supplies for Ukraine appear to have taken a back seat to the political drama being acted out in Kyiv. How... MORE