The Universal Patriarch in Constantinople is moving to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly, that is, the status of a Church with its own canonical territory and able to choose its own hierarchs. This has been a slow-moving process until recent weeks, when Constantinople Patriarch... MORE

The governments of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan gathered in the Kazakhstani port city of Aktau, on August 12, and signed the Convention on the Caspian Sea’s Legal Status. Among other important points, Article 14 of the Convention recognizes the parties’ right to lay... MORE

  *To read Part One, please click here. The unexplained assassination of the Donetsk “People’s Republic” leader, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, on August 31 (see Part One) provoked a factional commotion in Donetsk. The Kremlin had to intervene openly from September 5 onward to stabilize the political... MORE

The leader of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR), Aleksandr Zakharchenko, was assassinated by a bomb blast on August 31, after almost four years of continuous service to the Russian occupation in three capacities simultaneously: “head of the republic” (“glava respubliki”), head of the “council of... MORE

In late August, the Ukrainian magazine Tizhden published excerpts from a book by the former president of France, François Hollande, Les Leçons de Pouvoir (The Lessons of Power). The passages touch upon Hollande’s impressions of the night of February 11/12, 2015, which he spent in... MORE

Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan has been stepping up his insistence that train and bus routes to Russia should be canceled. Such a decision would need to be approved by President Petro Poroshenko. Omelyan’s recommendation is driven by security concerns: Kyiv alleges that visitors from... MORE

Because interpreting news from Belarus has been challenging for outsiders, some verifiable background information about the country may prove useful. For example, for the eighth straight year, the former “last dictatorship of Europe” leads the world in the number of Schengen visas allotted per 1,000... MORE

Following the demise of the Islamic State (IS) territorially, authorities across Europe are grappling with serious questions regarding the return of foreign IS fighters. Countries have followed a variety of paths in dealing with returnees.  These include judicial proceedings and jail time for those arrested,... MORE

The war in Ukraine’s east was the topic that Merkel placed at the top of her remarks at the August 18 Berlin-Meseberg meeting with Putin (see Part One). Putin relegated this topic to the end of his remarks, as if to confirm Russia’s current tactic... MORE

German Chancellor Angela Merkel uncharacteristically interrupted her summer vacation to receive Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 18, 2018, at Meseberg Castle, near Berlin. It was the second Merkel-Putin meeting within three months. Their meeting in Sochi last May triggered a flurry of bilateral German-Russian... MORE