The Kremlin has reason to celebrate as Russian foreign policy recently registered several significant successes across Europe’s East. First, following almost three decades of resistance, Belarus ostensibly agreed to a number of important joint institutions with Russia, pushing bilateral integration forward, with Minsk as the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. On September 18, in the Minsk Contact Group, the Ukrainian delegation, headed by former president Leonid Kuchma, declined to negotiate with Russia and Donetsk-Luhansk toward codifying the Steinmeier Formula into an... MORE

Bucharest’s Road to Beijing Goes through Washington As with many other Eastern and Central European nations, Romania has consistently considered its relationship with the United States to be a privileged one: a strategic partnership meant to mitigate the risks of a neighboring assertive Russia. Nonetheless,... MORE

In October 2013, President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) unveiled the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious plan to build infrastructure and improve transport connectivity in more than 60 countries across Asia and beyond. Since that time, the BRI has... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The Minsk One and Minsk Two “agreements” (September 2014 and February 2015) dictated to Ukraine to accept a constitutional special status for the Russian-controlled Donetsk-Luhansk territory; to amnesty those criminally involved in seizing local administrations there; and to... MORE

Amid speculation of mounting tensions in Russian-Belarusian relations (see EDM, September 9, 16), the two allies’ militaries conducted their quadrennial Union Shield (Shchit Soyuza) exercise last week (September 13–19). Along with the better-publicized West (Zapad) strategic-operational exercises (see EDM, September 20, October 6, 10, 2017),... MORE

Moscow exploits the new Ukrainian leadership’s inexperience as a chance to cement Russian control over Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk territories in a political settlement. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks eager for a quick-fix “peace” as a goal in itself, and he hopes for a meeting and... MORE

While some seven or eight years ago newsworthy events pertaining to Belarus were considered rare, today they are so abundant it is difficult to choose which to focus on. Just during the last week, a lingering debate over Belarus’s integration with Russia reached a fever... MORE

On September 4, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) launched a pre-trial investigation against representatives of Motor Sich, one of the largest manufacturers of engines for airplanes and helicopters in the post-Soviet space, over the firm’s alleged “subversive activities” against Ukraine. The SSU asserts that... MORE

The term “political technology” prevalent across the former Soviet space, might perhaps be best described as “a euphemism for what is by now a highly developed industry of political manipulation.” The Kremlin has used this tool widely in Russia as well as in other former... MORE