On February 25, President Viktor Yanukovych arrived to a frosty reception in Brussels for a European Union–Ukraine summit (Kyiv Post, February 25), less than two weeks after Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court launched investigatory proceedings into the 1996 murder of then Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, Yevhen Shcherban.... MORE

Ukraine has declared the Transnistria conflict a top priority issue of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Ukrainian chairmanship in 2013 (OSCE press release, February 19). Nominally, the OSCE has been in charge of handling this conflict since 1993. Ukrainian diplomacy harbors... MORE

Ukraine has rejected Russia’s demand that it pay a fine for taking less Russian gas from pipelines last year than stipulated by contracts. Kyiv’s position is that the contracts, which it considers damaging to Ukraine, should long ago have been revised. Gazprom can now sue... MORE

More than 20 years after independence, Ukraine’s security forces are over-manned, incompetent and largely remain neo-Soviet in their operating culture. On January 18, the prosecutor’s office accused former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of being in league with Pavlo Lazarenko (prime minister in 1996–1997) for the... MORE

Shell will extract unconventional gas in Ukraine according to an agreement signed with Ukraine last week. This will be Ukraine’s first big project with a large multinational company in the oil and gas sector, and Chevron is likely to follow suit later this year. With... MORE

The recent appointment of a second government led by Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov confirms Ukraine’s evolution from an oligarchy to a cronyist state whereby positions of power are increasingly being accorded to “the Family,” composed of President Viktor Yanukovych’s close relatives and loyal associates from... MORE

The year 2012 was a disappointing one for Ukraine. In the field of foreign policy, Kyiv failed to either convince the European Union to sign an association and free trade agreement or persuade Russia to cut the gas prices that the ailing Ukrainian economy can... MORE

A meeting in Morocco on December 12 by The Friends of Syria representing 100 countries recognized the opposition National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Force as the sole representative of the Syrian people. The step opens the way for increased humanitarian and military assistance... MORE

Ukraine has started construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal designed to process 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per annum out of some 55 bcm the country consumes. After the start of gas imports from Europe last month (see EDM, November 20),... MORE

Political instability in post-election Ukraine may soon be be compounded by economic and financial instability that has the potential for social unrest. The World Bank calculates that Ukraine has the second lowest per-capita income in Europe followed by Moldova. Ukraine, which was the second largest... MORE