The Ukrainian snap parliamentary elections are scheduled for July 21. According to the latest opinion survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KMIS), at least four political parties are expected to enter the Verkhovna Rada: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People (polling... MORE

Moldova’s Socialist President Igor Dodon seems to have cast aside his old, pet “federalization” project, which would have empowered Transnistria in Chisinau and thereby empowered Russia in a federalized Moldova (see EDM, July 17). Dating back to 2013, his project is still displayed on the... MORE

The Union State Treaty between Russia and Belarus (signed in April 1997) declares, in Chapter II, Section II, Articles 17–18, that border security falls into a group of key bilateral issues that must be solved jointly. In practice, this gives Russia control over Belarus’s external... MORE

Ambassadors from Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United States, and the European Union, collectively the mediators and observers to the Transnistria conflict-settlement negotiations, held talks in Chisinau and Tiraspol on July 12. This group seeks to promote the... MORE

The Russian authorities are quite effective at responding to specific and immediate domestic challenges. However, like governments elsewhere, they are less capable of dealing with slower-moving tectonic shifts. And consequently, they often view these as even more disturbing when such developments suddenly take on public... MORE

July 20, 2019, marks the 25th anniversary of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rule. Unlike most post-Soviet national leaders, he had no background in the Soviet nomenklatura, rising to the helm of power from a state farm director and defeating the acting–prime minister, Viachaslau Kebich, a... MORE

In mid-June, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) ruled that the snap parliamentary elections called by newly inaugurated President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be scheduled for July 21 (Pravda.com.ua, June 20; see EDM, May 22). Recent polling, conducted by the sociological firm Rating, shows that 42.3... MORE

The vehicle ramming and knife attack carried out by three jihadists on London Bridge on June 3, 2017, killed eight people and injured 48, ending only when the police shot and killed the attackers. This was the third most fatal Islamist attack in the UK... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The Romanian government’s multi-year bet on Vladimir Plahotniuc in Moldova collapsed when his personal power succumbed to internal and external challenges. Warning signs had pointed the way to this outcome, but Bucharest responded each time by doubling down... MORE

The common desire of Moscow and Beijing to develop railways linking Asia with Europe is not making as much progress as the two parties had hoped or as many had expected. This is due in part to international concerns involving third countries, including the Central... MORE