Russia is inadvertently helping Ukraine, the United States and the European Union to escape the trap of the April 17 Geneva Joint Diplomatic Statement “On the Situation in Ukraine” (https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/04/224957.htm). The quadripartite statement was, in fact, dead on arrival in Geneva, as Russian President Vladimir... MORE

Pro-Russia armed groups fanned out during April 11–14 across Donetsk oblast, capturing the seats of authority in town after town: Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Makiyivka, Mariupol, Horlivka, Khartsyzk, Yenakiyeve, Zhdanivka, and several others.  This is a conflict coordinated from Moscow, designed to create faits accomplis on the... MORE

Moscow seems to be preparing the atmosphere for a possible military intervention in Ukraine’s eastern regions. Russia could, if it deemed expedient, intervene there with troops in some form or other, as it has just done in Crimea. But, more likely, Moscow would leverage the... MORE

The crisis over Crimea has confirmed and further developed a paradigm of Russian re-expansion and Western self-denial in Europe’s East. This paradigm operates as follows (continued from Part One, EDM, April 4):5. Europe’s East consigned to Grey Zone. The United States, the European Union and... MORE

On April 1–2 in Brussels, the Ukraine-NATO Commission held a ministerial-level meeting to discuss the conflict with pronounced military dimensions between Russia and Ukraine (UNIAN, April 2).Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, however, would not use the term Russia-Ukraine conflict. Similarly, they have long... MORE

Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, and Western hand-wringing in response, demonstrate the depth of the security vacuum in Europe’s East. Comprising Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, this area forms the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) and the European Union’s direct eastern neighborhood.... MORE

Visiting Moldova on March 29, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland declared that US-Moldova relations “have never been stronger” (Moldpres, March 30). Nuland’s visit was the latest in the series of high-profile US-Moldova meetings following Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.US President Barack Obama... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on the incorporation of Crimea into Russia (kremlin.ru, March 18; see EDM, March 19) aimed far beyond Crimea in scope and ambition. Explicitly, Putin called into question the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state. Implicitly, he laid a basis for challenging... MORE

Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, officially effective from March 18 (see EDM, March 19), brings two distinct territorial units into the Russian Federation, namely: the Crimean republic and the Sevastopol municipality, henceforth subordinated directly to Russia’s central government.Sevastopol’s special status derives from Russia’s Black... MORE

Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine is now an accomplished goal in its own right. But it is also an intermediate goal, part of a broader agenda to threaten Ukraine with fragmentation or decomposition, unless Ukraine reorients toward Russia. In turn, Ukraine’s reorientation or its... MORE