The end of summer 2019 found Russian President Vladimir Putin busy with high international politics. He is no longer riding with aging bikers in Crimea or making pilgrimage to the Valaammonastery together with Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Instead, he traveled to France and Finland as... MORE

Volodymyr Zelenskyy inherited formidable challenges when he was elected Ukraine’s sixth president this spring, including a Kremlin-backed war with “separatists” in the east, deep-rooted corruption, and an ongoing natural gas dispute with Russia. Ukraine is now responding to the gas discord by trying to negotiate... MORE

Ukraine’s ambassador to Norway, Vyacheslav Yatsiuk, visited the Svalbard archipelago on June 12, where he stated that his country “may become an Arctic player” (Vestifinance.ru, July 5), even though Kyiv is not currently directly involved in the region’s affairs. In 2017, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr... MORE

When a government engages in mass murder or forcible deportations, most observers see that as a clear sign of ethnic engineering—even if there are unresolved debates as to whether such actions fall under the terms of the international convention against genocide. Yet, when the powers... MORE

A Russian commercial tanker named Nika Spirit entered the Ukrainian port of Izmail on July 24. However, using the EQUASIS international information system, Ukraine identified the cargo ship as the vessel (at that point named the Neyma) that had blocked the Kerch Strait on November... MORE

On July 17, Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of the pro-Russia opposition in Ukraine’s newly elected parliament, visited the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where he launched a “Concept Plan to Resolve the Crisis in the South-East of Ukraine.” A long-time Kremlin ally, Medvedchuk is also the... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin is promoting his closest Ukrainian confidant, Viktor Medvedchuk, on the international level. This effort was manifest ahead of Ukraine’s parliamentary elections and is set to continue thereafter. The Kremlin is using Medvedchuk in several, parallel roles: First, as leader of the... MORE

On July 21, Ukrainians went to the polls for the third time this year to vote for a new parliament in snap elections. According to the preliminary results, President Voldymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People (SoP) party received 43.16 percent of ballots cast, giving it... MORE

Since Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian Crimea, in 2014, the peninsula’s most important port city of Sevastopol has largely escaped close international scrutiny. In some sense, this is understandable—compared with the “Republic of Crimea” (as the rest of the peninsula was renamed by the occupying Russian... MORE

The Ukrainian snap parliamentary elections are scheduled for July 21. According to the latest opinion survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KMIS), at least four political parties are expected to enter the Verkhovna Rada: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People (polling... MORE