*To read Part One, please click here. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has entrusted Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, with jolting Odesa province from backwardness into modernity, and to try this amidst a war. This unprecedented reform experiment has turned Odesa into a pivotal province of... MORE

It was a rare coincidence in world politics that two pivotal and protracted negotiation processes—the European Union’s talks with Greece on managing its debt, and the “P5+1” talks on managing the Iranian nuclear program—both culminated in crucial agreements at the start of this week (July... MORE

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the United States’ ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev descended on Odesa in separate visits (July 2–July 8), to confer with Governor Mikheil Saakashvili there. Georgia’s former president aims to turn this undeveloped province of Ukraine into... MORE

Georgians have shown a keen interest in the events in far-away Greece, which has been on the verge of leaving the Eurozone, if not the European Union itself. All news programs on Georgian TV now routinely begin with the latest news about negotiations between EU... MORE

It appeared too great a temptation to pass up for the Kremlin when Greece’s impending default and exit from the Eurozone or even the European Union (the so-called Grexit) occurred simultaneously with the annual BRICS summit, this time under Russian leadership, in Ufa, on July... MORE

In a surprising turn of events, on July 8, the Russian state-run natural gas monopoly Gazprom canceled a contract with the Italian oil and gas services group Saipem. The two companies were supposed to jointly build the first line of Turkish Stream, the Moscow-backed pipeline... MORE

On July 1, President Petro Poroshenko made public the draft amendments to Ukraine’s Constitution, regarding decentralization of the country’s administrative-territorial system (Kyiv Post, July 1). The amendments redefine the relationship between Ukraine’s central government and the administrative-territorial units on three levels (province, district, community), devolving... MORE

The “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk (“DPR, LPR”) have announced their intentions to stage local elections, outside Ukraine’s constitutional and legal framework, on their respective territories. This move continues the hollowing out of the September 2014 Minsk agreement by decisions of Moscow, Donetsk and... MORE

The Belarusian parliament endorsed a new date for the upcoming presidential elections: October 11. It is unlikely that shifting elections from November (as originally planned) to October will make a difference either in terms of negative trends in the economy or in terms of the... MORE

Although not commonly associated with the Cossacks, the city of Kazan (in the ethnic republic of Tatarstan, historically a Muslim region) played host, in mid-June, to a meeting of the regional coordination center for Cossack revival. The meeting was attended by the Cossack Party of... MORE