On November 25, Russian Coast Guard ship Don rammed a Ukrainian tugboat, damaging the latter vessel’s main engine. The attack occurred while two Ukrainian small-sized armored artillery boats, the Berdyansk and Nikopol, and the tugboat Yany Kapu were being transferred from the Ukrainian Black Sea... MORE

Kremlin-orchestrated, internationally unrecognized “elections” were held on November 11 in the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” (DPR, LPR), Russian-controlled territories in Ukraine’s east. The final returns, made public on November 14, serve to confirm and prolong the authority of the “head of the republic” (“glava... MORE

Nearly a hundred members of the European Parliament (MEP) sent an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on November 7, imploring her to halt the construction of the Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline. The MEPs referred to the pipeline—designed to carry an additional... MORE

The Romanian Defense Ministry will announce, on November 15, the winner of a tender to acquire four multirole corvettes to equip Romania’s Naval Forces (Adevărul, October 26). This announcement will mark the official beginning of the Romanian navy’s modernization process. The four ships will be... MORE

On November 5–6, a group of high-profile foreign policy analysts from the United States visited Minsk and met with Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The guests included retired General Benjamin Hodges, who in 2014–2017 commanded US Army forces in Europe; Michael Carpenter, a former Deputy Assistant... MORE

Ukraine’s presidential campaign is in full swing. Five months out from the election (the first round is scheduled for March 31), it remains entirely unclear who the next head of state will be. Yet, the likeliest contenders are incumbent President Petro Poroshenko and former prime... MORE

On October 25, the 82nd (and largest to date) humanitarian convoy organized by Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS) delivered 700 tons of humanitarian aid to “the residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts” (RIA Novosti, October 25). These provinces make up Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas... MORE

If public statements recently made in and about Belarus were to be ranked in descending order of significance, the October 31 remarks by A. Wess Mitchell, US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, would arguably come out on top. “We understand the deep... MORE

Russia is continuing to implement its “boa constrictor strategy” in the Sea of Azov, aimed at strangling the economy of Ukraine’s littoral areas (see EDM, February 22, April 12, May 22, 31, June 11, 28). The overall situation has sharpened since this spring, when the... MORE

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine reported at the end of October that one of its long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) had gone missing. According to an OSCE spot report (Osce.org, October 27), the drone disappeared... MORE