Author: Mark Raczkiewycz

KYIV – Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba calls his country’s flurry of meetings since the New Year with foreign envoys “network” diplomacy. That language comes in lieu of the more fre­quently used “shuttle” diplomacy that he described as a Cold War relic during an online briefing with journalists on February 2. As case in...

KYIV – Talks in Paris concluded this week between the political advisers to the leaders of Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia amid a heightened security situation that Moscow has caused by massing more than 127,000 troops along its border with Ukraine. Meanwhile, the United States and NATO this week rejected Moscow’s main security demands that...

KYIV – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the second time in less than a week addressed the nation urging citizens not to panic amid Russia’s potential threat to further invade the country in a war that will soon enter its ninth year. He again implicated the media for stoking fears of Russia waging a larger-scale...

KYIV – Washington and Moscow remain at a diplomatic impasse regarding the security situation in Kyiv as Russia continues massing additional troops and heavy weaponry near Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a congressional delegation from Washington and Germany’s new foreign affairs minister visited Ukraine this week to show their support for the eastern...

KYIV – More than 70 Ukrainian government websites were penetrated with a “well-coordinated” cyberattack overnight on January 13-14, Ukrainian cybersecurity officials said. Ten of those attacks targeted government websites that “underwent unauthorized penetration,” Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP) said. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and SSSCIP, which protects government information technology...

KYIV – Three rounds of European security talks focusing on Ukraine and involving U.S. officials and Russia this week resembled a hostage situation. About 100,000 Russian troops armed with heavy weaponry and positioned along its borders have “a gun pointed to Ukraine’s head,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said ahead of the first round...

KYIV – For Roman Tsymbaliuk, 41, there were too many ominous signs. State Duma lawmakers were making official inquiries into his work as Ukraine’s only correspondent accredited with Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry. The Kremlin was taking an unusual interest in whether he would attend President Vladimir Putin’s traditional end-of-year news conference on December 23. For...

KYIV – Ukraine and Western capitals moved forward in an unabated flurry over the New Year to deter Russia from waging a bigger war against its neighbor. For the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the European Union’s top foreign diplomat visited the frontline of the war in Luhansk Oblast on January 5....

KYIV – An award-winning Ukrainian opera and drama theater director was detained in Italy while transiting to his native Lviv on the basis of an extradition request from Russia. Yevhen Lavrenchuk, 39, was detained in Naples on December 17 based on an “Interpol circular,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman said on Facebook this week. A Russian...

KYIV – Ukrainian law enforcement has accused the nation’s fifth president and current lawmaker Petro Poroshenko of treason and financing terrorism amid the ongoing specter of Russia waging fuller-scale war with Ukraine. Considered the incumbent’s chief rival for the presidential seat, Mr. Poroshenko is accused of facilitating the purchase of power-generating coal in 2014-2015 from...

KYIV – Dutch prosecutors this week completed reading a detailed indictment at a courtroom of the Schiphol Judicial Complex in the Netherlands during which time they demanded life sentences for three Russians and one Ukrainian who are accused of causing a commercial airliner to crash over Ukrainian skies on July 17, 2014. The three-day procedure...

KYIV – Diplomatic talks at the highest level continued this week in an effort to avert a larger-scale war that Russia has been threatening as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with several counterparts for the yearly Eastern Partner­ship Summit at the European Union’s (EU) headquarters in Brussels. As the menace of a further Russian invasion...