There is no doubt who gained most from the deal reached in Minsk on February 12th to end the conflict in Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin. At a minimum, a frozen conflict will block Ukraine’s progress towards NATO and the EU; and if fighting resumes, the terms of the ceasefire will leave Ukrainian forces in a weaker position than now. […]
Another series of Russian provocations involving the Baltic states, related to the Ukraine war, makes so-called hybrid war scenario more and more realistic within the region of the Baltic Sea. The incidents that took place so far, such as the Internet existence of “People’s Republic of Vilnius” or the hooligan attacks on the Polish Embassy in Vilnius, seem to suggest that the Kremlin is going to use the Polish minority of Lithuania, along with the tough history of the Polish-Lithuanian relations, as the basis for its activities, aim of which would be to destabilize the region. […]
Lithuanian Minister of National Defence Juozas Olekas says that defence ministers of the European Union countries perceive the threat of a hybrid armed conflict rising from the East and the need for the EU to be ready to repel this threat. […]
Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania’s first post-Soviet leader and honorary chairman of the conservative Homeland Union, says that the Minks agreement for ceasefire between Kiev’s forces and Moscow-supported separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, which was signed on Thursday, is worse than the Munich agreement of 1938. […]
The outcome of the ongoing talks in Minsk might be “bad” or “very bad”, says Laurynas Kasčiūnas, an analyst from the Vilnius-based Eastern Europe Studies Centre, commenting on the talks on the situation in eastern Ukraine that continue in the Belarusian capital of Minsk on Thursday. […]
While Ukraine‘s government forces are fighting pro-Russia separatists in the eastern Donbass region, Western leaders are engaging in a tense diplomacy game with Russian President Vladimir Putin. […]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited United States President Barack Obama in the White House on Monday. The visit, which had been planned for some time, saw both leaders discuss a wide array of trade and security issues. The recent developments in Ukraine, with Russia destabilizing the country, dominated a large part of the talks and the hour-long joint press conference that followed. The press conference was attended by Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Ambassador Susan Rice. […]
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be spoken to in the language of ultimatums at talks on the Ukraine crisis, a Russian radio station quoted the Kremlin as saying on Monday. […]
Amid fears by some politicians of a new “Munich Agreement” in talks on the situation in eastern Ukraine, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė has said that she trusts that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will not betray Ukraine or Lithuania. […]
Recently at a conference in Tver on issues of Stalinist history, an historian friend of mine from Novosibirsk asked me “Do you really hate Russians?” […]
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is visiting Kiev on Thursday, has said that Russian aggression in Ukraine cannot be ignored, Euronews reports. […]
An appeal, by 142 German-speaking experts on Eastern Europe, calls for a reality-based and not illusions-guided Russia policy. […]
Having convened for an extraordinary session on 29 January, the European Union Foreign Affairs Council decided to extend current sanctions against Moscow. New restrictions against Russia will be imposed only if the situation in eastern Ukraine does not improve or deteriorates. Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevičius has called the decision an optimal one. […]
It is tempting to slip into a spiral of sensationalism when describing the concurrent trends in Belarus’s foreign relations and national aspirations, even though—if history is any guide—these trends may be reversed as abruptly as they started. So far, however, tensions have been on the rise along Belarus’s eastern flank; whereas, there has been steady improvement in Belarus’s relations with the West. According to the assessment of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, this has been the case since the very beginning of 2014. […]
Analysts at the Russian Institute for Strategic Research (RISI), a Moscow-based think tank that pushed hard for Russia to invade Ukraine, are now urging Moscow to overthrow Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. […]
Russian people are living in an alternative reality created for them by President Vladimir Putin, one completely disconnected from the rest of the world, says German political scientist Andreas Umland, senior research fellow, at Kyiv-based Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation. […]
Why have we seen an intensification of military action in eastern Ukraine? Government forces report that Russian troops are pushing towards not just Donetsk Airport, but essentially in all directions. This way, all previous predictions about how the military conflict will only smoulder during the winter but won’t advance have burst like soap bubbles. Fierce fighting has recommenced, civilians are dying as well as soldiers. […]
The Russian Federation’s propaganda and other aggressive actions in the information space have recently been the subject of buoyant discussion within the context of events in eastern Ukraine. Crucial, however, to an in-depth and factual debate on this subject is to take a look at the historical context and roots of the new Russian propaganda. […]
International relations expert Raimundas Lopata says that Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently engaging in the classic chicken game with the West. […]
Mikhail Khodorkovsky‘s speech in Vilnius last week drew considerable controversy, with some saying his suggestions of easing economic sanctions on Russia played right into Vladimir Putin‘s interests, while others noting Khodorkovsky’s sober and measured reasoning. The following is a full transcript of Khodorkovsky’s address, translated from Russian by Katerina Sinkevičienė. […]
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