Three conflicts occurring simultaneously along separate fronts are currently vying for international attention: Russia and its allies continue to besiege the Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo, and a massive Russian naval force is assembling in the Eastern Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Iraqi and international coalition forces led... MORE

Ukraine has approved reforms aimed at changing domestic electricity market rules, a step that is essential for curbing corruption in the power sector. This complements the natural gas pricing reforms undertaken earlier, in 2015–2016, which achieved price parity on the domestic market with import prices;... MORE

This week (September 28), a Dutch-led group of investigators from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine published the preliminary results of their more-than-two-year investigation into the crash of flight MH17. The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down, on July 17, 2014, over territory... MORE

Reportedly, the Kremlin is mulling an idea to relocate 500,000–1,000,000 people from the southern portions of the Russian Federation to the Far East and Siberia. This prospect has sparked fears among some non-Russians. Specifically, certain regional minorities, including Crimean Tatars from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula,... MORE

Antonov, Ukraine’s only designer and manufacturer of aircraft, has severed all ties with Russia, which had been its main market and partner for decades (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 10). This was unavoidable, given the de facto war waged by Moscow, which prompted Kyiv to stop Ukrainian... MORE

The Russian Armed Forces have begun their pre-announced strategic military exercise “Kavkaz 2016” in Crimea, the North Caucasus, and the Black and Caspian Seas. Reportedly, the exercise, held on September 5–10, “will test the battle-readiness of troops, new weapons, as well as command-and control equipment.”... MORE

Pavel Sheremet (born in 1971), one of the most well-known Belarusian journalists, was killed on July 20, in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, where he was working for the last five years (Ukrainskaya Pravda, Tut.by, July 20). The car Sheremet was driving fell victim to an explosive... MORE

The ethnic-Ukrainian share of Ukraine’s population is now greater than the ethnic-Russian share of the Russian Federation’s population—and significantly larger if one does not include Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbas in the Ukrainian estimation. Despite that, Moscow continues to try to play the ethnic card in... MORE

President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials frequently refer to Ukraine’s weak social cohesion, thereby justifying the notion that Russia is intervening in this allegedly ungovernable weak state to protect its clientele groups there. During this year’s St. Petersburg Economic Forum (June 16–18), Putin indirectly... MORE

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s public message in Kyiv on July 7 (see accompanying article) reaffirms, broadly, the talking points that Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland had been delivering in Kyiv since May 2015 (see EDM, May 26). It was at that point that Kerry... MORE