*To read Part One, please click here.   Regime change remains Moscow’s political objective in Belarus (see Part One). This is defined as easing out President Alyaksandr Lukashenka with his assent, as part of an internal constitutional settlement. Russia wants this settlement to be negotiated... MORE

What looks to the world as another “color revolution,” this time in Belarus after the August 9 presidential election, outgrew and overwhelmed an initial Russian operation against the disobedient President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The unforeseen, spontaneous popular protests against electoral fraud have compelled Moscow to change... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Elements of the Transnistria conflict-conservation model are taking shape in Ukraine’s Donbas conflict theater, with moves to recast Russia’s state-on-state aggression as an inner-Ukrainian conflict. The July 22 enhanced ceasefire agreement and the preconditions just confirmed for holding... MORE

“Frozen” is a Western mischaracterization of Russia’s protracted conflict undertakings against Moldova in Transnistria, against Georgia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and now of the desired end to Russia’s intervention in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas. Those conflicts never “froze” in a political sense—not even after the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the head of his Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, have chosen former president Leonid Kravchuk (86) to head the country’s delegation to the Minsk Contact Group as well as former prime minister Vitold... MORE

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appointed former president Leonid Kravchuk as chairperson of Ukraine’s delegation to the Minsk Contact Group, the forum that negotiates solutions to Russia’s undeclared war against Ukraine. Concurrently, Zelenskyy has appointed former prime minister Vitold Fokin as a member of this delegation.... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, have de facto acquiesced to the quasi-recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk “armed formations” in a signed agreement at the political level on July 27. Following the... MORE

Open-source evidence makes it possible to trace the steps that led Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, to quasi-recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk “armed formations” in a signed agreement at the political level (see EDM, July 29, 30, August 5).... MORE

Russia’s presidential envoy for conflict-management in Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak, has sent a highly undiplomatic letter to his other counterparts in the “Normandy” forum, gloating over bypassing this forum to maneuver Kyiv into quasi-recognizing Moscow’s military proxies in Donetsk-Luhansk. The agreement on “Measures to Strengthen the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The agreement on additional measures to strengthen the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, effective from July 27 for an unlimited duration (see Part One in EDM, July 29), resuscitates the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC, an inactive... MORE