President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appointed former president Leonid Kravchuk as chairperson of Ukraine’s delegation to the Minsk Contact Group, the forum that negotiates solutions to Russia’s undeclared war against Ukraine. Concurrently, Zelenskyy has appointed former prime minister Vitold Fokin as a member of this delegation.... MORE

Mahatma Gandhi may never actually have said of colonized peoples that “first, the imperial authorities ignore you; then, they laugh you; then, they fight you; and then, you win”; but this observation nonetheless aptly fits Moscow’s evolving relationship with the Circassians. The Russian center had... MORE

Sunday, August 9, was election day in Belarus. The official result: 80.8 percent for the incumbent, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and 10.09 percent for his main challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Six percent of eligible Belarusians voted against all candidates (there is such an option), so the remaining... MORE

The Russian Security Council held a virtual session last Friday (August 7), and President Vladimir Putin opened with the proposal to discuss the “international situation in general”; if his subordinates had any other business, it could be discussed “in a routine manner” (Kremlin.ru, August 7).... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, have de facto acquiesced to the quasi-recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk “armed formations” in a signed agreement at the political level on July 27. Following the... MORE

Open-source evidence makes it possible to trace the steps that led Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, to quasi-recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk “armed formations” in a signed agreement at the political level (see EDM, July 29, 30, August 5).... MORE

Introduction On June 25, the former Minister of Defense of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) Igor Strelkov-Girkin (born December, 17 1970) admitted that “instead of bringing freedom to Donbass, I brought destruction and a six-years` war. Yet, I have no regrets about my actions”... MORE

The ministers of foreign affairs of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine held a trilateral meeting in the southeastern Polish city of Lublin, on July 28, to discuss regional cooperation (Gov.pl, July 28). To pursue such future development, the officials notably established the “Lublin Triangle,” a new... MORE

Russia’s presidential envoy for conflict-management in Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak, has sent a highly undiplomatic letter to his other counterparts in the “Normandy” forum, gloating over bypassing this forum to maneuver Kyiv into quasi-recognizing Moscow’s military proxies in Donetsk-Luhansk. The agreement on “Measures to Strengthen the... MORE

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis notwithstanding, Ukrainian politics has thoroughly entered campaign mode with local elections scheduled for this coming October. According to the Kyiv-based pollster Rating Group, as of a month ago, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, Servant of the People, registers 29.3 percent support among... MORE