On March 30, 2021, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) adopted a new law on reservists, #1357-IX, which modifies existing legislation (Rada.gov.ua, March 30). The bill was initiated by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in May 2020, and he signed it into law a month after... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his closest entourage sometimes raise public expectations of what the United States can deliver to Ukraine to unrealistically high levels. Furthermore they tend to discount the close relationship between what the US is actually... MORE

The traditional May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow was not a grand affair this year, unlike the one originally planned for 2020, which had to be postponed and curtailed because of the severe aggravation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The rumble of tanks on Red... MORE

Antony Blinken is visiting Kyiv today (May 6) on his first bilateral visit as US Secretary of State to a European country (Ukraiynska Pravda, May 6). This choice should have been foreordained in view of Ukraine’s pivotal significance to the power balance in Europe and... MORE

Russian top officials—in particular, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (RIA Novosti, April 27) and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev (Kommersant, April 8)—have for weeks been talking about the deepening crisis in Russia’s relations with the United States while at the same time expressing some hope that... MORE

On March 24, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) announced it had exposed and impeded the activity of two illegal private military companies (PMC)—Doncorp Ukraine and its parent entity, Donbas Battalion Corporation. A pair of former Ukrainian people’s deputies—the former commander of the Donbas Battalion,... MORE

A recent wave of arrests of ethnic Ukrainians across the Russian Federation for supposedly organizing extremist groups and planning terrorist attacks has sparked fears in Ukraine that Vladimir Putin may seek to exploit these incidents to stage a provocation inside Russia. Such a scheme would... MORE

At the end of each winter training cycle, the Russian Armed Forces typically hold extensive readiness checks in the month of April. So unsurprisingly, on April 6, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the Russian military would carry out 4,048 such snap exercises at 101... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. “We should not let Mr. Zelenskyy and his team off the hook, but let them twist [wriggle, squirm] there,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently told reporters (RIA Novosti, April 28). This is Lavrov’s own style of signaling... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent plan to emerge from his extended self-isolation with new energy did not quite work out as expected, and he clearly needed to pause. Last week (April 28), United States President Joseph Biden touted his achievements at the symbolic 100-day mark... MORE