The tragic battles around Donetsk and Luhansk (collectively known as the Donbas region) have taken a pause, and as civilians try to rebuild a semblance of normal life, leaders are figuring out how to now move forward. In his first 100 days, Ukrainian President Petro... MORE

On September 10, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed into law a bill on sanctions against Russia (president.gov.ua, September 10). The law was published in official newspapers on September 11, which gave Poroshenko legal grounds to, as soon as September 12, slap sanctions on Russia for... MORE

While on a several-day visit to the Russian Far East (see Jamestown Blog on Russia and Eurasia, September 9), Russian President Vladimir Putin spent less than six hours in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on September 3. He took this trip amidst the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and... MORE

On the eve of a new round of anti-Russian sanctions unveiled by the European Union on September 9, Gazprom’s CEO, Alexei Miller, kicked off a two-day visit to Kyrgyzstan. The head of the Russian natural gas giant and Vladimir Putin’s close advisor had previously visited... MORE

On September 5, Ukraine, Russia, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and leaders of the Moscow-backed separatist “governments” signed an armistice agreement in Minsk. The armistice protocol’s Point 4 envisages a “permanent monitoring [of the situation] along the border between Russia and... MORE

The ceasefire agreement signed in Minsk, on September 5, by representatives of Ukraine, Russia and Moscow-backed rebels operating in Ukraine’s Donbas region (area including Luhansk and Donetsk provinces) seems to be holding. Yet, serious problems of implementation persist among the different parties to the somewhat... MORE

In July 2014, when the war in eastern Ukraine was becoming increasingly intense and bitter, former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili accused the new Georgian authorities of persecuting “the officers of the armed forces that came to Ukraine to consult the Ukrainians during the fighting.”... MORE

Ukraine has been “coerced to peace” by Russia after five months of hostilities, as Georgia was in 2008 after five days. Russia’s hybrid war methods, rehearsed already against Georgia and deployed fully against Ukraine, proved indecisive, until Russia escalated to the level of conventional war... MORE

In March 2013, China passed legislation integrating four of its five maritime law enforcement (MLE) agencies into the newly-created China Coast Guard, under the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) (see also China Brief, March 28, 2013). [1] This decision, long called for by people both in... MORE

The September 5 Minsk meeting of the Contact Group (CG) on Ukraine that resulted in a ceasefire deal continues to reverberate in the global media as does the overall conflict in Ukraine. For Belarus, two sets of issues appear noteworthy: the statements of the meeting’s... MORE