In Kyiv, on February 22–23, with a working visit, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier portrayed the “Normandy” group’s upcoming March 3 meeting in Paris as a make-or-break event, designed to overcome the diplomatic deadlock over “the Ukraine crisis.” The diplomatic process is stuck... MORE

Negotiations in the Minsk Contact Group on political issues are so configured as to push Ukraine into recognizing the Moscow-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR), first de facto and then de jure, through local elections and a “special status.” For its part, Ukraine... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Russia’s new representative in the Minsk Contact Group “on the implementation of the peace plan in the East of Ukraine,” Boris Gryzlov, has been closely associated with President Vladimir Putin for nearly 20 years, since Putin was still... MORE

Russia’s primary objectives in the Black Sea region are to maximize its strategic and maritime influence there, isolate Ukraine and Georgia, weaken the cohesion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Black Sea security issues, and limit access to the area through the Turkish Straits... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. During the Munich Security Conference, the Barack Obama administration’s messages about Ukraine were inevitably affected by being paired with entreaties for Russian cooperation in Syria (see Part One in EDM, February 16). After Secretary of State John Kerry... MORE

Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territories, and its continuing military operations in Ukraine’s east, receded from center stage at the Munich Security Conference on February 12–14. Instead, the calamities visited upon Europe by wars in Syria and the wider Middle East (uncontrolled mass migrations into Europe,... MORE

Ukrainian gas consumption fell significantly last year, as GDP declined by more than 10 percent, and the output of the domestic industry in particular, which is heavily depends on natural gas, plunged by more than 13 percent. This allowed Ukraine to reduce gas imports from... MORE

On Monday, February 8, Russia’s defense minister, Army-General Sergei Shoigu, announced that the military forces of the Southern and Central Military districts, the Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskikh Sil—VKS) the airborne troops (Vozdushno Desantnye Voyska—VDV), the military transport air force (Voenno Transportnaya Aviatsiya—VTA), the Black Sea... MORE

Up to now, the shaky ceasefire in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region has mostly continued to hold (see EDM, January 21). And thus, the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in early 2014, has returned near the top of Kyiv’s international agenda. Following the... MORE

Since an uprising unseated the pro-Russian regime of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, relations between Kyiv and Moscow have gone from bad to worse. Responding to a recent ban of Ukrainian imports and seeking a way to reach post-Soviet Central Asian states and... MORE