Section: The Jamestown Foundation (USA)
Belarus and Published Opinion-Making
In early November, journalists and analysts convened in Tallinn, Estonia, for the fifth annual meeting of the “Rubicon” conference fully devoted to issues pertaining to Belarus. This year, the major topic was “Belarus as a factor of regional security and stability.” The participants were unable to come to a consensus on whether Belarusian...
Normandy Group Micromanaging Fake ‘Election’ Preparations in Donetsk-Luhansk
Germany’s Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hosted a meeting of his Russian, French, and Ukrainian counterparts (“Normandy” group), on November 6, in Berlin, to lift the December deadline on the implementation of the Minsk armistice in Ukraine. This move, a foregone conclusion, may turn the armistice implementation into a...
Minsk Armistice Implementation in Ukraine Officially Postponed
Meeting on November 6, in Berlin, the ministers of foreign affairs of the “Normandy” group (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine) finally acknowledged that the Minsk armistice cannot be implemented by this year’s end, as originally intended. They agreed to postpone the implementation into next year, without setting another deadline. The...
Russia’s Operation in Syria: Concealing Mission Creep
Russia’s air operations in Syria have triggered speculation concerning Moscow’s objectives, the length of the campaign, as well as the levels of planning involved. On the one hand, Russia’s information campaign describes a limited engagement, which boosts domestic support for the intervention. The Kremlin fears Russian forces...
Russian Analysts Call Ukrainian Involvement in the North Caucasus ‘Futile,’ but Gear up to Counter It
Russian experts have reacted to the recent establishment of a group in the Ukrainian parliament called “For the Free Caucasus.” One of them, Vladislav Gulevich, has predicted that the Ukrainian political forces that want to detach the North Caucasus from Russia will fail because Ukraine “has never had high-quality specialists on the Caucasus and...
Cooptation and Repression: The Kremlin’s Approach Russian Nationalists
The now-annual extreme-nationalist “Russian March” in Lublino (a working-class district in Moscow, populated mostly by ethnic Slavs), on November 4—National Unity Day—saw a sharply reduced number of marchers this year. Last Wednesday’s march in the Russian capital had only about 700 participants, whereas previous years’ marches had...
Georgia Inches Closer to Civil Confrontation, as New Wiretapped Recordings Surface
The ongoing political and legal stand-off between the Georgian government and the opposition over the ownership of the Rustavi 2 TV channel (Rustavi 2, Media.ge, October 2; see EDM, October 26) has become even more tense as new wiretapped recordings surfaced on October 29. The Ukrainian website Uarevo.in.ua published alleged recently recorded...
Russia’s Strategy of Limited Engagement in Syria: Progress, Tests and Challenges
Since Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s air operations in Syria, Russian experts and commentators have attempted to interpret this policy shift. Putin and other members of the political-military leadership claim the intervention is limited to sending arms to Damascus and conducting air operations to support the...
The Sine Qua Non Safeguards For Donetsk-Luhansk Elections
On October 27 in the Minsk Contact Group, the Ukrainian delegation presented a concept document to serve as a basis for the “law on local elections in the temporarily occupied areas” of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (see accompanying article). President Petro Poroshenko has personally authorized this concept and mandated...
Minsk Process Refloats Donetsk-Luhansk Election Plans
Recasting Russia’s armed proxies as democratic mandate-holders—and tutoring them to look like that on an election’s schedule—is an innovation of the Minsk armistice and ensuing negotiations on the status of the occupied territories in Ukraine’s east. Russia had never seriously attempted to sell this approach to Western powers in...
