: :inin Kyiv (EET)

Section: The Jamestown Foundation (USA)

      Fortress Russia: Pushing Foreigners Back
      Apr29

      Fortress Russia: Pushing Foreigners Back

      This week marked the 30th anniversary of the April 26, 1986, Chernobyl reactor meltdown—a nuclear disaster that saturated northern Ukraine, southern Belarus and parts of western Russia with radioactivity in the worst fallout in human history. But in the present atmosphere of acute anti-Western sentiment in Russia, even Chernobyl is being used by...

      Lukashenka’s Report to the Nation: Rhetoric Versus Reality
      Apr28

      Lukashenka’s Report to the Nation: Rhetoric Versus Reality

      On April 21, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered his annual “report to the Belarusian people and the National Assembly [parliament].” When speaking about the economy, Lukashenka did not use the words “crisis” or even “decline”; yet, he recognized the country’s inadequate labor productivity and competitiveness (Tut.by, April 21). He...

      Ukraine’s New Government Expected to Continue Reforms
      Apr28

      Ukraine’s New Government Expected to Continue Reforms

      On April 14, Ukraine’s parliament replaced the cabinet of unpopular Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk with one headed by Volodymyr Hroysman, who had served as parliament speaker since November 2014. A former mayor of President Petro Poroshenko’s electoral and business stronghold of Vinnytsya, Hroysman has always been in...

      Putin’s Secret Force Multiplier: Special Operations Forces
      Apr26

      Putin’s Secret Force Multiplier: Special Operations Forces

      One in three questions posed to President Vladimir Putin during his recent annual live phone-in show covered issues of national security. Public interest in events in Donbas has apparently shrunk substantially, and the only concerns expressed about the Islamic State (IS) were limited to worries about fighters possibly returning Russia. Putin...

      Kaliningrad as a ‘New Ideological Battlefield’ Between Russia and the West
      Apr26

      Kaliningrad as a ‘New Ideological Battlefield’ Between Russia and the West

      On April 12, Igor Nikolaychuk, the head of the Department of Regional Security Problems at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, traveled to Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, where he proclaimed that the oblast would never become a demilitarized “region of peace” (Newsbalt.ru, April 12). Moreover, he blatantly accused “external...

      Russia’s Aggressive-Repressive Policies Bring No Long-Term Gains
      Apr26

      Russia’s Aggressive-Repressive Policies Bring No Long-Term Gains

      Claims of “stability” and “confidence” shaped President Vladimir Putin’s answers to the carefully selected questions posed during his annual 220-minute-long live TV call-in program, which aired on April 14. Since then, however, Russian foreign and domestic policies have zigzagged so much that the notion of “stability” has become irrelevant,...

      Ukraine’s New Concept Paper on Security and Defense Reform
      Apr23

      Ukraine’s New Concept Paper on Security and Defense Reform

      On March 16, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko approved the “Concept for the Development of the Security and Defense Sector” (President.gov.ua, March 16). The document lays out the “Western” vision for Ukraine’s security and defense sector reform and specifies the goals for this process. The concept paper also shows that security sector...

      Romania Bidding For Influence In Moldova (Part One)
      Apr23

      Romania Bidding For Influence In Moldova (Part One)

      For the first time since the fall of communism in Romania and the Soviet Union (1989, 1991), Romania has become an active contestant for influence in its own right in the Republic of Moldova. This policy has come about suddenly, but the prerequisites were accumulating to almost predetermine a more active and ambitious Romanian policy in Moldova....

      Russian Jets Fly Close to US Ship and Recon Aircraft Over Baltic Sea
      Apr21

      Russian Jets Fly Close to US Ship and Recon Aircraft Over Baltic Sea

      Last week (April 12), two Russian Su-24 bombers closely overflew the guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook, in the Baltic Sea, in international airspace. The incident happened relatively close to the Baltiysk naval base, in the Kaliningrad enclave. Two days later, an Su-27 fighter intercepted a United States RC-135 reconnaissance jet and...

      Are Moldovan Consumers Financing Transnistrian Separatism?
      Apr21

      Are Moldovan Consumers Financing Transnistrian Separatism?

      The “leader” of the separatist Moldovan region of Transnistria, Evgheni Shevchuk, met with Russia Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, in Moscow, on April 14. No official press statement followed, other than a few lines by Rogozin’s assistant on social media. Reportedly, Rogozin called upon the would-be candidates in Transnistria’s...