On Monday, February 8, Russia’s defense minister, Army-General Sergei Shoigu, announced that the military forces of the Southern and Central Military districts, the Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskikh Sil—VKS) the airborne troops (Vozdushno Desantnye Voyska—VDV), the military transport air force (Voenno Transportnaya Aviatsiya—VTA), the Black Sea... MORE

Up to now, the shaky ceasefire in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region has mostly continued to hold (see EDM, January 21). And thus, the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in early 2014, has returned near the top of Kyiv’s international agenda. Following the... MORE

Since an uprising unseated the pro-Russian regime of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, relations between Kyiv and Moscow have gone from bad to worse. Responding to a recent ban of Ukrainian imports and seeking a way to reach post-Soviet Central Asian states and... MORE

Given Moscow’s desire to get out from under the sanctions regime and the almost equal desire of some Western governments to declare victory and lift it, the Kremlin appears likely to do just enough to claim that it has fulfilled the Minsk Accords and the... MORE

One year ago, bloody battles raged throughout the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas. The traditional autumn “rasputitsa” (mud season) usually ends by January: The dirt freezes, allowing trucks, troops and heavy military equipment to maneuver through fields and use unpaved roads. By mid-January 2015, the... MORE

Moscow is openly unhappy with the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, which came into effect starting on January 1, 2016. Consequently, Russia has slapped an embargo on Ukrainian food and complicated the transit of Ukrainian goods... MORE

For months, the various negotiations formats on conflict management in Ukraine appeared deadlocked. But suddenly, in mid-January 2016, signs of a breakthrough in the making have multiplied—bringing both hopes and concerns to all the parties involved. The most meaningful of these signs was United States... MORE

Shortly before its residents rang in the New Year, the Russian-annexed peninsula of Crimea again found itself entirely without Ukrainian electricity. As in November, this was caused by unidentified saboteurs who blew up a power transmission line tower in Ukraine’s Kherson province, which borders Crimea.... MORE

Russia’s conflict undertaking in Ukraine’s east fits within patterns familiar from other post-Soviet conflicts, initiated by Russia and conserved on Russian terms with international assistance (see EDM, December 17). However, Russia’s war in Ukraine’s east involves a number of major political and military innovations in... MORE

Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine’s east—directly and by proxy—has saddled Ukraine with a “frozen” conflict in its Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. The parallel situation in Crimea also qualifies as a “frozen conflict,” insofar as Russia’s forcible annexation is not recognized internationally, and in that sense... MORE