On January 21, in Brussels, Russia and Ukraine held ministerial-level talks on the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe via Ukraine (TASS, January 22, 2019). The European Commission is chairing this process, and the ministerial meeting just held in Brussels was the second at... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seems actually keen for German and French observers to arrive as soon as possible at the Kerch Strait—albeit on Russian-defined ground rules. Following the November 25, 2018, assault on Ukrainian naval ships,... MORE

Turkey and Ukraine are boosting their strategic cooperation in the military sphere. Last week (January 12), Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko stated that he signed an agreement on the purchase of 12 Turkish Bayraktar Tactical Block 2 (TB2) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for the Ukrainian military... MORE

The German government has submitted a revamped proposal for Russia to “ensure” unimpeded shipping through the Kerch Strait and Azov Sea, where Russia’s de facto control is usurping Ukraine’s rights. Berlin’s offer centers on international monitoring of the safety of navigation there (see EDM, January... MORE

On January 18, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas submitted to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow a freshened-up German proposal for Russia to “ensure” unimpeded shipping through the Kerch Strait. In that case, a German-French group would monitor the traffic to certify that it... MORE

The main political theme in Georgia in recent days has been the position of the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC) regarding the recognition of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. On December 27, the Georgian Patriarchate declared that the Holy Synod—the main decision-making body of the... MORE

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered a sanitized account of the failed “Normandy” meeting (Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France) that discussed the crisis in the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait. The meeting was held in Berlin on December 11 in almost complete secrecy (see accompanying article),... MORE

Russia has rejected the German government’s proposal to deploy monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait. The mission would have been tasked with monitoring shipping in those two bodies of water and report on... MORE

Russia’s relations with the West steadily worsened throughout 2018, and hopes that the presumed positive chemistry between United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, might help find some way to reverse this trend never materialized. The long-awaited full-scale Trump-Putin summit in... MORE

In late evening, on November 26, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) implemented Martial Law in selected regions of Ukraine that is to last until December 26 (Rada.gov, November 26). President Petro Poroshenko pushed the legislature to adopt this measure after the Russian Coast Guard attacked... MORE