Russia

EWI Releases 2013 Annual Report

Our 2013 Annual Report highlights EastWest Institute’s accomplishments of last year. The institute’s goal of building cooperation and forging real solutions to daunting international problems continues to be as relevant as it was at its founding more than 33 years ago.

President and CEO John Mroz states in his President’s Report,  “It is clear that the East and West must work more closely with one another to address issues that affect us all, and establish a new world order that reflects current economic, military and political realities. We have recently seen the dangers when this does not happen.” He emphasizes EWI’s continued key role as a bridge between major powers. 

This report summarizes, among other key efforts, the expanded scope of EWI’s Global Cooperation in Cyberspace program, a cornerstone of the institute’s work. Our Regional Security Initiative continues to push for private and public sector collaboration in Afghanistan and the surrounding region, securing a peaceful, prosperous transition post-2014 troop withdrawal.  Our ongoing U.S.- China high-level dialogues continue to explore ways to manage critical differences over Taiwan, cybersecurity and regional tensions, and we released a well-received Taiwan arms sales policy recommendation that presents a creative way forward to reduce cross-Strait military tension.

In 2014, EWI is forging ahead with these and other conflict reduction initiatives. We are deeply grateful for the continued support of our board, advisors and donors. 

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – May 22, 2014

EWI offers a daily situation report on Ukraine.

Internal Security News

  • Ukrainian border guards thwarted an attempt by “several groups of armed militants carrying weapons and ammunition from the Russian Federation to break through the state border of Ukraine.” The groups attempted to enter Ukraine at the border of the Krasnodonsky region of Lugansk Oblast.
  • Ukraine's largest bank announced that militants affiliated with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics have hijacked 15 cash-in-transit vehicles since early May.

Diplomacy News

  • Russian Deputy ambassador Alexander Kramarenko was due to meet British Foreign Office officials in London to “ask for clarification” regarding a statement allegedly made by the Prince of Wales in which he likened Russian President Putin’s actions in Crimea to those of Hitler. A spokesman for the Russian embassy in London called the alleged remark “outrageous” and “propaganda against Russia.”
  • (ITAR-TASS) Australia’s sanctions against Russia will not be unanswered, the Russian Foreign Ministry pledged. “We have been repeatedly saying that Russia does not accept attempts to speak to it in the language of sanctions,” the ministry said.
  • The Russian Ministry of Culture demanded the return of a Scythian gold collection on loan to a museum in the Netherlands since February, stating that a failure to return it could be considered “embezzlement.” The Netherlands does not recognize Crimea's unification with Russia, which took place after the opening of the exhibition, and the question arose as to whom the collection should be returned to once the exhibition closes in August. Ukraine previously requested that the gold be returned to Kiev.

International Observation News

Governance News

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – May 21, 2014

EWI offers a daily situation report on Ukraine.

Internal Security News

Diplomacy News

International Observation Missions News  

Constitutional Reform News  

Governance News

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – May 20, 2014

EWI offers a daily situation report on Ukraine.

Internal Security News

  • An unknown number of masked gunmen stormed nearly a dozen district election commissions in eastern Donetsk and Luhansk and demanded at gunpoint that officials turn over ballots and other documents pertaining to the May 25 presidential elections.
     
  • Steel magnate Rinat Akhmetov , Ukraine's richest man, called for a mass peace rally in the east, accusing separatists of leading Ukraine towards "genocide." Akhmetov urged tens of thousands of his employees to lead the protests. A similar initiative last week led to ethnic Russian separatists losing control of Mariupol.
     
  • (Interfax Ukraine) According to Interfax Ukraine, a 20-minute Peace March protest was held in the Donbas-Arena stadium in central Donetsk without incident.
     
  • Ukrainian Colonel Yuriy Lebid, acting head of the Eastern Operative-Territorial Junction, was released after being abducted by separatists on May 15, according to the Ukrainian National Guard press service on Facebook.
     
  • The head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's Department for Mass Public Events said that over 75,000 personnel, including 55,700 policemen and more than 20,000 volunteers, will maintain public order in Ukraine for the May 25 presidential elections.

Diplomacy News

  • The European Commission paid out a first loan tranche of 100 million euros ($137 million) to Ukraine, launching a €1.6 billion euro macro-financial assistance loan program to prop up the beleaguered economy.

Governance News

  • (Interfax Ukraine) According to a poll conducted by the Institute of World Policies, 70 out of 80 surveyed political science experts included Poroshenko on a list of three people worthy of the title of "European president," with 54 of the respondents putting him in first place. The project was supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
  • (Interfax Ukraine) Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council Secretary Andriy Parubiy said that new methods of so-called "hybrid warfare" have shown that Ukraine's defense sector requires comprehensive reform, in which NATO is ready to help. The statement was issued after a meeting of the joint NATO-Ukraine working group on defense reform in Brussels. 

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – May 19, 2014

EWI offers a daily situation report on Ukraine.

Internal Security

  • (Interfax Ukraine) Ukrainian President Turchynov said that the Donetsk and Luhansk regions have effectively been left with no security or police forces. “The reform of the law enforcement system is not happening fast. For instance, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are effectively left without the Security Service and police who are supposed to be prepared to fulfill their constitutional duties. All these systems need to be restored virtually from scratch.”

  • Ukraine’s Security Services stated that it had arrested individuals who were planning a terrorist attack in Odessa on May 18. 

  • One pro-Russian separatist was killed, one wounded, and an unspecified number were taken prisoner, including two Russian journalists, in clashes near Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, and Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk from May 17-19, Ukrainian authorities said. 

  • (Interfax Ukraine) A separate system for protecting law and order will be put in place in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions during the upcoming presidential elections, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk said.

  • A top Ukrainian Interior Ministry official said that 32 pro-Russia protesters who retreated inside Odessa’s Trade Unions building after clashes with pro-Ukraine activists and later died when the building was torched on May 2 might have been poisoned with chloroform.

  • The payment of pensions and public sector salaries in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, cities in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region, will be suspended because of attacks on banks, post offices and infrastructural facilities, the interior minister said.
     

Constitutional Reform

Diplomacy

Governance 

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – May 16, 2014

EWI offers a daily situation report on Ukraine.

Internal Security News

International Observation News

  • A UN report compiled by 34 observers on the ground cited cases of targeted killings, torture, beatings, abductions, and sexual harassment, as well as intimidation of the media in what it deemed an "alarming deterioration" of human rights in eastern Ukraine.
     
  • (RIA Novosti)The UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights stated that 127 people have been killed in the anti-terrorist operation in southeastern Ukraine. A total of 250 people have died in clashes in Ukraine since November 2013.
     
  • (Interfax Ukraine) OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Astrid Thors visited Ukraine.
     
  • (ITAR-TASS) A senior diplomat with the Russian Foreign Minstry said that an OSCE report on Ukraine distorts the reality of the situation in Ukraine, ignoring the Kyiv government’s violations of human rights as well as the rise of neo-nationalist and xenophobic sentiments in the society.
     
  • (ITAR-TASS) The Russian Foreign Ministry’s criticism of the UN human rights report stated that its authors “somehow forgot to mention the termination of Ukraine in Crimea supply of fresh water - an action that violates a number of human rights."
     
  • (RIA Novosti) The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the authors of a United Nations report on Ukraine attempting to justify the punitive operation in the country were trying to “whitewash” the authorities in Kyiv.
     

Diplomacy News

Governance News

 

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – May 15, 2014

EWI offers a daily situation report on Ukraine.

Internal Security News

International Observation News

Constitutional Reform News

Diplomacy News

Governance News

  • Ukrainian presidential candidate, leader of the Batkivschyna Party, and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko suggested holding a referendum on the day of the presidential election that will include governance issues, foreign policy and NATO relations.

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – May 14, 2014

EWI offers a daily situation report on Ukraine.

Internal Security News

  • Six members of the Ukrainian armed forces were killed in a "terrorist attack" near Kramatorsk, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement on its website.

Constitutional Reform News

Diplomacy News

  • (ITAR-TASS) Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry referred to the OSCE roadmap on crisis settlement as an “auxiliary instrument.” Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, speaking from Brussels, provided no direct answer as to whether or not he supports the roadmap. In his words, the settlement plan should be “purely Ukrainian.”
  • (ITAR-TASS) The European Commission and members appointed by the Verkhovna Rada Cabinet of Ministers agreed on the need to investigate  events that occurred in Odessa on May 2, when fighting between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian crowds culminated with a fire and the deaths of over 40 people.
  • German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, speaking from Kiev, warned that the situation in eastern Ukraine is "still dangerous and threatening," and backed the interim government’s efforts to start a national dialogue. Steinmeier said the May 25 elections would play a "decisive role" in restoring calm to Ukraine and urged steps to disarm illegal separatist groups who have seized key buildings in the east.
  • A Ukrainian delegation headed by PM Yatsenyuk visited Brussels on May 13 to meet with the European Commission.

Governance News

  • (Interfax Ukraine) The Verkhovna Rada adopted four remaining bills to allow a transition to the implementation phase of an action plan that will simplify a joint visa regime with the EU.
  • (ITAR-TASS) Ukrainian aviation authorities banned local airlines from making regular and charter flights to a number of Russian regions in the North Caucasus, including Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and North Ossetia.
  • An inter-faction union of MPs called the Anti-Crisis Group was created in the Verkhovna Rada.

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – May 12, 2014

EWI offers a daily situation report on Ukraine.

Internal Security News

  • Ukraine's acting President and Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov said the situation in Mariupol has stabilized. Turchynov said the military operation in the eastern regions of the country continues, adding that "the situation is more or less stable in the northern part of the Luhansk region."
     
  • (RIA Novosti) The Ukrainian army began an artillery bombardment of the eastern city of Sloviansk following the referendum. Casualties were reported on May 12 following the shelling of a village near Sloviansk by Ukrainian troops. On May 11, the government in Kyiv announced the final phase of its “anti-terrorist” operation, with the Interior Ministry claiming to have razed roadblocks near Andreevka, as well as near other flashpoint cities in the southeast.
     
  • Self-proclaimed “People’s Governor” of Donetsk Pavel Gubarev accused Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, of financing separatism in eastern Ukraine. Akhmetov denied the accusation. 
     

International Observation News

  • (Interfax Ukraine) OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Swiss President Didier Burkhalter condemned the referendums held in Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
     
  • (ITAR-TASS) OSCE Chairman Didier Burkhalter said that the organization would send 1,000 observers to the Ukrainian presidential election on May 25; this represents the largest observation mission in the OSCE’s history. 
     
  • (Interfax Ukraine) The OSCE decided to appoint German Diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger as its negotiator on maintaining the dialogue in Ukraine.
     
  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande stated that the OSCE should collect illegal weapons in Ukraine and observe the scheduled May 25 presidential election.
     
  • During a May 9 call with U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for urgent dialog, mediated by the OSCE, between Kiev and south-eastern regions of Ukraine.
     

Constitutional Reform News 

Diplomacy News

Governance News

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