While continuing to exchange barbs, the West and Russia are building a more institutionalized pattern of standoff in Europe that involves increasingly predictable tit-for-tat mirrored actions. Both sides profess their actions to be purely defensive, but these are increasingly robust defenses. The North Atlantic Treaty... MORE

Leaders of the Belarusian opposition took part, on May 23, in the Brussels-based meeting of the European Parliament’s (EP) Committee on Foreign Affairs. All of them but Tatyana Korotkevich, the 2015 presidential hopeful from the Speak the Truth campaign (STC), signed a joint statement about... MORE

Having illegally occupied Crimea and worked to destroy the Milli Mejlis (the de facto quasi-governing assembly of the Crimean Tatars) and all other independent Crimean Tatar organizations, Moscow is now offering that nation an ersatz form of autonomy. Russian propagandists will undoubtedly use this alternative... MORE

On May 17, Polish state-owned natural gas pipeline network operator Gaz-System S.A. published its updated strategy for 2016–2025. A noteworthy new element in the document is the plan to create a natural gas hub in Poland, aimed at establishing a regional gas market in Central... MORE

According to Refat Chubarov, the president of the Crimean Tatar World Congress and the elected chairperson of the Mejlis (the quasi-governing assembly of the Crimean Tatars), the Russian Federation is in the process of creating a Crimean Tatar military corps to neutralize protests and counter... MORE

Latvia’s new State Defense Concept, approved by the Cabinet of Ministers this week (May 24), is an ambitious declaration for a stronger defense buildup. At the same time, it represents a kind of “wish list” just ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) approaching... MORE

The top leaders of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine (the “Normandy Group”) conferred by telephone on the night of May 23–24, at Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s initiative. Poroshenko sought an endorsement of Kyiv’s proposal for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland held talks, in Moscow, with Russian presidential advisor Vladislav Surkov, on May 17–18 (see Part One). According to the United States government’s official account of the meeting, the talks focused on... MORE

Informal discussions are sputtering along between Washington and Moscow over implementation of the Minsk armistice in Ukraine. This bilateral process originated in May 2015 as an accompaniment to the Barack Obama administration’s decision to seek Russia’s “help” on Syria. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland... MORE

Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian air force helicopter pilot, was captured by Moscow-backed separatist forces during fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, in the summer of 2014, and ended up in a Russian jail. Savchenko was serving in Donbas as a volunteer soldier with... MORE