Joining the list of autonomist movements in at least 19 other European countries, the Szekler community in southeastern Transylvania has ignited an ethno-political brushfire in Romania. According to the “Petition on the Day of Szekler Freedom,” the group demands territorial autonomy and “full and effective... MORE

Baku hosted the first joint gathering of the heads of the railway administrations of Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Poland, on June 19. The meeting was dedicated to the newly-launched “South-West Transport Corridor,” which links into the broader Trans-Caspian International Route project launched in 2016.... MORE

Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in literature, gave a speech, on June 27, in Brussels, at the European People’s Party Group’s hearing “Belarusian society: towards a modern political and national identity?” She was one of seven Belarusians at the hearing, the remaining six... MORE

The Black Sea region has for centuries played a key role in Russia’s southwestern policy. In the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), Russia took the opportunity to create naval forces in Crimea. And during subsequent wars with the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire moved into Bessarabia, the... MORE

The Ukrainian state operator of power transmission lines, Ukrenergo, signed an agreement on June 28 with the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) to integrate Ukraine’s power grid with the European one. Neighboring Moldova is also about to sign a similar agreement... MORE

Yevgeny Shevchuk, the former “president” of the separatist region of Transnistria, escaped prosecution by the current Transnistrian leadership on June 28, finding refuge in Moldova of all places. Despite speculation of his departure to Malta, Shevchuk appears to be living comfortably with his family in... MORE

The Russian-Belarusian military exercise Zapad 2017 has gained a lot of attention even before it has started, which is not surprising considering the previous exercises in the “Zapad” series and the changed security situation in the Baltic Sea Region. To Russia’s and Belarus’s European neighbors,... MORE

Moscow continues with its preparations for the Zapad 2017 bilateral strategic military exercises with Belarus in September, widely expected to be the largest display of Russian military strength since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Concerns among members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)... MORE

On June 22, Minsk hosted a large gathering of top diplomats from Central and Eastern Europe, who came to Belarus to participate in the annual foreign ministers’ meeting of the Central European Initiative (CEI). The event took place within the framework of the Belarusian presidency... MORE

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has completed its plan, announced last year (July 9, 2016) at the Alliance’s Warsaw Summit, to deploy four multinational battalions to Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania as a counter to the apparent Russian threat on its eastern flank, in... MORE