Author: Vladimir Socor/Eurasia Daily Monitor

Russia basically revised its strategic agenda regarding Ukraine midway through this war. Moscow’s initial agenda aimed to control the whole of Ukraine politically and economically, integrating Ukrainian territory and resources with those of Russia (alongside Belarus) into an anti-Western bloc and springboard. Stunned by Ukraine’s defense on the battlefield, Russia has adopted a different agenda...

Western governments have yet to define what would constitute Ukraine’s victory – and, ipso facto, the West‘s victory – in reversing the results of Russia’s two invasions of Ukraine. Some of the most influential Western leaders are hinting that their military assistance to Ukraine is geared to a stalemate in the field involving de facto...

The Munich Security Conference, running from February 17 to 19, and the upcoming one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, are high water marks of support from the United States and Europe to Ukraine. These two events are made-to-order for the Western allies in announcing more ambitious levels of...

Russia, immersed in its war on Ukraine, does not currently have Moldova in its crosshairs, at least as long as Ukraine holds out. Russia has adopted a reactive posture regarding Moldova. The Kremlin seems to refrain from any significant initiative toward Moldova – for example, re-launching the “5+2” process on Transdniester (also known as Transnistria)...

The Ukrainian Presidential Office envisages a system of international security guarantees vis-a-vis Russia that would answer Kyiv’s post-war requirements. The guarantees would be provided by willing North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries, albeit, at the moment, short of NATO membership, this would potentially clear Ukraine’s path to membership in due course. The proposal is...

Russia began installing managers and technical staff at Ukraine’s Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) soon after seizing the plant by military force on March 4 and well before officially annexing Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region to Russia. Moscow completed the formal annexation procedures on October 5, and that same day President Vladimir Putin issued a decree to...

The Muscovite Tsardom portrayed its relentless territorial expansion as “gathering Russian lands.” In many cases, the lands in question were not even Russian, but once conquered, they were subjected to Russification in due course. The tsars and Russian emperors added the informal but glowing title “gatherer of Russian lands” to their official titles, basking in...

On October 4, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy released a decree effectively ruling out negotiations with Russia’s incumbent president. Technically, Mr. Zelenskyy’s decree confers legal force on the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council’s (NSDC, or in Ukrainian, RNBO) September 30 decision, which “determin[ed] that holding negotiations with the Russian Federation’s President Vladimir Putin is impossible.”...

The Russian State Duma and Federation Council were set to enact the annexation of Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhia regions and the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (“DPR,” “LPR”) to the Russian Federation, following the September 23-27 annexation “referendums” in those areas. The Duma’s chair, Vyacheslav Volodin, refered to those aggregated territories as Novorossiya (Interfax, September...

Russia is proceeding apace to absorb the occupied territories in Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv regions, already transforming them into Russia’s own image. Western powers have reacted to the prospect of Ukraine’s further amputation with a deafening silence. In a rare exception, the United States White House issued a strongly worded protest on July 19,...

Part 2 (Part 3) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had blocked Ukraine’s membership track long before Russia’s 2022 re-invasion of Ukraine. The summit in Madrid (June 28-30) changed nothing in this respect. While the proverbial door remained open to Ukraine in theory, the path to it was blocked in practice by certain Western members,...

Part 3 (Part 2) Four months into the biggest conventional war in Europe since World War II and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies did not demonstrate a coherent strategy to deal with this war at their summit in Madrid (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, July 6, 7, 8, 11). While all allies agree on defining...