*To read Part One, please click here. Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande have prevailed on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to accommodate pseudo-elections in the Russian-controlled territory into a special Ukrainian law. Poroshenko himself, and the Ukrainian body... MORE

Two notable pieces of news related to Belarus broke in recent days: the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich, on October 8, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka was reelected president of Belarus, on October 11. It is debatable which of these news items actually... MORE

Moscow has instructed the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR-LPR) to postpone the local “elections” that were scheduled for October 18 and November 1 in that Russian-controlled territory of Ukraine. Those elections would have been staged separately from Ukraine’s own local elections, which are scheduled... MORE

On September 28, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka made a speech at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit. His remarks contained sharp criticism of the United States’ policy of forceful democracy promotion across the world as well as of arbitrary and self-centered unilateralism that became possible after... MORE

As the presidential campaign in Belarus nears its end, the initially marginal issue of a prospective Russian airbase on Belarusian territory has grown ever louder (see EDM, September 23). On October 4, members of the Belarusian opposition held an unsanctioned rally, in the center of... MORE

The Cossacks in Stavropol region are struggling with the contradictory goals of serving the Russian state and retaining their identity. The Cossacks try to argue that they have a distinct Cossack identity, but at the same time, they proclaim that their sole purpose of existence... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The pro-Europe civil-society group, “Platform for Dignity and Truth,” introduced the demands for new parliamentary and presidential elections to be held in Moldova promptly. This can only play into the hands of pro-Russia parties (see Part One). Paradoxically,... MORE

As anticipated from the outset (see EDM, September 9), the pro-Europe “Platform for Dignity and Truth” in Moldova has: 1) steadily lost steam in its effort to replace Moldova’s declared “pro-Europe” government with a genuine one, and 2) been overtaken by Russia-oriented regime-changers, with potentially... MORE

On September 21, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree to construct a railway line allowing trains in southern Russian to bypass Ukrainian territory. The new 75-mile double-track electrified railway will replace the existing one, 16 miles of which traverses Ukraine’s war-torn Luhansk region.... MORE

The Russian air campaign in Syria has captured so much international attention that this past Friday’s (October 2) difficult summit in Paris, involving French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin, made nearly no headlines. The... MORE