On June 14, during the first international Global Cybersecurity Summit, in Kyiv, the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, stated that “Ukraine has become a playground for the testing of the most up-to-date cyber techniques” by the Russian Federation (Ukrinform.ru,... MORE

In recent weeks, Moldova has been dealing with one foreign policy scandal after another. Relations with Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, the Council of Europe and even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have all been strained to varying degrees.... MORE

It is worth noting that, in recent months, two segments of the Belarusian analytical community—zealously Russia-oriented commentators on the one hand, and the radical Westernizing opposition on the other—have conspicuously not published anything of substance. The leading wordsmiths from the former group are in jail... MORE

Mali: Limited Progress on Sahel Joint Force The proposed anti-terror joint force of the Sahel G5 nations — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — received a boost this month when the EU pledged the equivalent of $56 million to bolster security efforts in... MORE

“Not merely tanks and weapons can kill, words can too,” wrote archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the leader of Belarusian Catholics, in his resentful letter to Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in literature. “The war that Russia started in Donbas is on Russia’s conscience,” Alexievich... MORE

The recent decision by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to ban popular Russian social networks VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki, on May 15 (see EDM, June 7), provoked serious debate both inside Ukraine and abroad. Now that the initial anxiety over that ban has somewhat subsided, it... MORE

Twice in the past several weeks, Russian intrusions put the Baltics on high alert. On June 1, several Russian soldiers, traveling from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad without transit permits, were stopped in Lithuania (Apollo.lv, June 2). A week later, two Goryn-class tugboats—the MB-119 and... MORE

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Sochi, on May 17, a few days before the G7 summit, which was organized by Italy and held in Taormina, Sicily. The Trump-Gentiloni meeting focused on a number of pressing issues, from economic... MORE

The aggressiveness Moscow has shown in its relations with countries in the former Soviet space reflects Russia’s loss of influence via “soft” power channels. At the same time, the Kremlin’s demonstrated bellicosity simply exacerbates that loss. Consequently, if President Vladimir Putin is going to rebuild... MORE

Ukraine’s state defense-industry concern Ukroboronprom announced, on May 30, that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) offered to add Ukrainian defense-industry firms to its list of approved defense-related producers. Ukroboronprom said it may be allowed to participate in tenders to... MORE