Vasyl Hyrtsak, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), announced, on March 9, that a prominent public figure, in collusion with the Moscow-backed leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), part of the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas, had been systematically transporting weapons... MORE

The Verkhovna Rada’s (Ukrainian parliament) committee charged with national security and defense delayed the progress, on March 19, of Draft Law 8068 “On National Security”  (Rada.gov.ua, accessed March 21), which had been submitted to the legislature by President Petro Poroshenko on February 28.  The Rada... MORE

Four years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it is more than obvious that the peninsula has been forcibly integrated into the contemporary Russian identity. All “achievements” claimed by Moscow since March 2014 are linked to the “reunification” of Crimea with Russia. Precisely because of that,... MORE

The ataman (head) of the Kuban Cossack voisko (army), Nikolay Doluda, reported that a National Guard platoon made up entirely of Cossacks is being created in Krasnodar Krai. This Cossack National Guard platoon will eventually be scaled up to a company, a battalion or even... MORE

Ukraine’s national oil and natural gas company, Naftogaz Ukrainy, claimed a final victory in a four-year dispute over gas supply and transit with Russia’s Gazprom. The Stockholm arbitration court, where Naftogaz and Gazprom sued each other in 2014, last December obliged Naftogaz to pay much... MORE

Kyiv claims Russia has been siphoning off natural gas from offshore fields it seized from Ukraine in 2014, after forcibly annexing Crimea. The Ukrainian government detailed its claims in a memo submitted to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg.... MORE

Moscow’s appetite in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov has not decreased after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russia has gradually advanced its presence into significant areas of the exclusive maritime economic zone of Ukraine, which, in accordance with international law, is... MORE

On January 30, 2018, Ukraine conducted the first successful flight test of its new cruise missile Neptun, aimed at examining the functions of its solid-propellant thruster and launcher (Rnbo.gov.ua, January 30). The Ukrainian defense industry is currently implementing two essential missile projects—the cruise missile Neptun... MORE

Many still view Belarus’s foreign and security policies through the prism of several popular but simplistic narratives. One of them classifies Belarus as Russia’s geopolitical backyard and, thus, tends to interpret every international move by Minsk as dictated by the Kremlin. Within another narrative, the... MORE

In order to secure and consolidate its control over Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in early 2014, Moscow has been building a bridge across the Kerch Strait to provide a physical link between the occupied peninsula and Russia proper. The ongoing construction of... MORE