Section: The Jamestown Foundation (USA)
The Battle of the Fifth Columns
On February 17–18, the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Sir Suma Chakrabarti, paid a visit to Minsk and met with President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (ONT, February 17). This was the first trip by an EBRD president to the Belarusian capital since the mid-1990s. On February 20, Belarus also hosted Edgars...
Murder That Revealed Truth
The photograph that hit millions of computer and smartphone screens late Friday (February 27) night, Moscow time, has instantly become a clear-focused image of what Russia has become amidst the Ukraine war: The night-time photograph in question shows a joyfully decorated bridge leading to the iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral and group of...
Moscow Again Putting Separatist Regions in Play Against Georgia
On February 18, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the head of the “Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Ossetia,” David Sanakoev, signed an agreement “On the State Border,” whereby Russia recognized the “state borders” of South Ossetia (Bigmir.net, February 20). A similar prepared treaty with the other separatist Georgian...
Will the West Bail out Ukraine?
The war in Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk did not stop when 2014 came to a close. Therefore, the $27 billion two-year assistance package, promised to Ukraine by the West last May, has turned out to be insufficient to keep the country afloat. In mid-February 2015, the leading industrial nations and international financial...
The Normandy Format and Ukraine: Doing More Harm Than Good
The foreign affairs ministers of Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine—the “Normandy Four” countries—met on February 24, in Paris, to review the situation in Ukraine’s east. Russian and proxy forces had captured Ukraine’s Debaltseve area on February 18, breaching the armistice signed at the “Normandy Four” summit in Minsk on February...
What Do the Minsk Armistice Talks Have in Store for Belarus?
Most political commentators agree that the Minsk armistice negotiations over the war in eastern Ukraine have raised Belarus’s international profile (see EDM, February 12). Thus, according to Kirill Koktysh, a Minsk-born professor at the Institute of Foreign Relations in Moscow, the Belarusian government should take advantage of the limited...
Russia Proposes a Yalta-2 Geopolitical Tradeoff to Solve the Ukrainian Crisis
As the Ukraine crisis deepens and European countries increasingly worry about the possibility of an all-out confrontation with Russia, the Kremlin has begun to make public the basic conditions of an overall political solution that could stabilize and deescalate the standoff. This week (February 25), Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin, 60, a member of...
Ukraine Caught in the Straitjacket of Negotiating Formats
The political and military terms of the Minsk Two agreement (February 12) and capture of Debaltseve by Russia’s proxies breaching the ceasefire (February 18) show the extent of Ukraine’s entrapment into Russia’s conflict stratagems. Russia has set those traps; the existing international system shows no way out for Ukraine; while...
Propaganda Theater and the Anti-Maidan Rally in Moscow
An estimated 32,000 people turned out for an “anti-Maidan” rally in Moscow on Saturday, February 21. The Russian march, condemning the Ukrainian government and its war in the country’s east, began on Moscow’s central Petrovka Street and ended at Revolution Square. The demonstration, which had been approved by the authorities, was...
Russia’s Quest for Balkan Influence and Bases
Russia has long harbored an expansionist drive to the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean. And the prelude or precondition for Moscow to be able to make real progress toward securing its influence in these areas has been its domination of Ukraine and the Black Sea (see EDM, September 22, 2014; October 16, 2014). Furthermore, it is quite...
