Ukraine Archives

The Martens Centre, the think tank of the centre-right European Peoples’ Party, issued appeals for maintaining the EU sanctions against Russia, on the grounds that Moscow is not fulfilling its obligations under the Minsk agreement.

A former adviser to ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich scored a legal victory over the European Union on Monday (26 October) when an EU court ruled that the bloc had been wrong to freeze his assets.

In the midst of the crises Europe is facing, EU leaders need to act swiftly and stop behaving “like if they were in a souk,” said Xavier Bettel, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, at a dinner in Brussels, on Wednesday evening (21 October).

Russia’s strategies to divide the European Union over the Ukraine crisis have failed so far, but Moscow will try again to divide the bloc, against the background of the Syrian war, professors said yesterday (21 October) at a discussion organised by German and US think tanks.

The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is expected to inform EU leaders at the summit tomorrow (14 October) about an upcoming referendum on Ukraine’s EU association, diplomats said.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said yesterday (13 October) she would investigate both sides in the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia for crimes, including the killing of peacekeepers and attacks on civilians.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said on Tuesday (13 October) he had no doubt Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine by Russian special forces because "drunken separatists" could not have operated the missile.

Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarussian journalist and dissident writer, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday (8 October) “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time", the Swedish Academy announced.

A decision by pro-Russian separatists to postpone local elections was welcomed on Tuesday (6 October) by Kyiv, the European Union, Washington and Moscow, as a sign of progress in the faltering peace process.

It will take time to organise elections in Ukraine that respect international standards and as a result, the so-called Minsk peace process will run into next year, French President François Hollande said yesterday (2 October).

The EU welcomed as a “positive step forward” the agreement reached yesterday (30 September) between Kyiv and insurgents, to withdraw smaller weapons from the buffer zone splitting eastern rebel-held lands from the rest of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday (29 September) derided Russia's call for the creation of an international anti-terror coalition, saying that the Russians inspire terrorism.

Russia on Monday (28 September) said it would close its airspace to Ukrainian airlines from October 25 in reprisal for a ban that Ukraine has slapped on two Russian firms.

Russia agreed to resume gas supplies to Ukraine over the winter under a deal clinched late Friday (25 September) with the European Union, capping months of difficult talks overshadowed by the Ukrainian conflict.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a new military doctrine on Thursday (24 September) naming Russia as the main military threat to Ukraine, according to a statement on the presidential website.

German and Russian delegates will meet once again at a reformed-Petersberg Dialogue, the first meeting since the forum was cancelled last year. EURACTIV's partner Tagesspiegel reports.

EXCLUSIVE/ Early elections would only profit the pro-Russian forces, former Prime Minister Vlad Filat told EURACTIV, as tens of thousands of Moldovans are protesting in Chisinau, demanding the resignation of the president, and early elections, over a $1 billion bank fraud that has hit living standards. 

Ukraine's president extended sanctions on Wednesday (16 September) to over 400 individuals and 90 legal entities, in response to a decision by rebels to set a date for what Kiyv sees as "illegal elections".

Assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a Ukraine military pilot held on murder charges by Moscow, and jailed Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi were shortlisted yesterday (10 September) for the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said today (10 September) that a deal between Russia's Gazprom and its European partners to expand the Nord Stream gas pipeline was a "betrayal" that would cost Ukraine and Slovakia a combined billions of euros.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will meet, along with the French and German leaders, in Paris on 2 October, in order to discuss efforts to resolve the Ukrainian conflict, the Kremlin said yesterday (9 September).

Poland's conservative president yesterday (8 September) slammed a deal between Russian energy giant Gazprom, and several leading Western firms, to build a second gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, saying it ignores Polish interests.

Gazprom and its European partners signed a shareholders' agreement on the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project that will run beneath the Baltic Sea to Europe, bringing Europe closer to Moscow's energy orbit.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko today (1 September) called yesterday's attack by extremist forces on Ukraine's parliament, in which a police officer was killed and several people were seriously wounded, "a stab in the back".