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Catch up quickly with the stories from Central and Eastern Europe that matter.

Russia’s war on Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week appointed Rustem Umerov, a Crimean native with extensive business and political experience who has chaired Ukraine’s commission monitoring international financial and military aid to the country’s war effort, as the country’s new defence minister. He replaces Oleksiy Reznikov.  

Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, will be the first Muslim to hold the position. Observers say his elevation to the post signals Kyiv’s seriousness about retaking the Crimean peninsula—where Russia has persecuted Crimean Tatars since illegally annexing the region in 2014. 

The defence ministry “needs new approaches,” Zelensky said in dismissing Reznikov, whose ministry has been plagued by corruption allegations. Reznikov himself hasn’t been implicated, but the controversy has tainted the ministry amid intensifying anti-corruption measures as the country seeks to join the European Union. 

Ukraine on Monday said that Russian debris fell on Romanian territory after an attack, which was vigorously denied by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. 

However, on Wednesday, Iohannis was forced to ride back after debris from a Russian drone was found on Romanian territory near the Danube river. Iohannis called it “a serious violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Romania.” 

Russia has been bombarding Ukrainian ports on the banks of the Danube since President Vladimir Putin pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal, with missiles and drones frequently landing near Romania.  

As a NATO member, Romania is protected under article 5 of the military alliance’s treaties, which says that an attack on one member will be considered an attack on all members. Iohannis said the country is “on alert” and in contact with NATO allies. 

At a meeting with the European Commission on Wednesday, EU ambassadors from 22 of the 27 member states either openly opposed the idea of extending the restrictions on Ukrainian grain imports or remained deeply sceptical. 

Ukrainian grain products—wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds—are banned from the markets of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia under a deal struck with the European Commission earlier this year to protect their farmers from an influx of cheaper produce from their war-torn neighbour. 

The restrictions are due to expire on September 15, but the front-line five have been advocating for their extension until at least the end of the year.  

While many countries recognised the difficulties faced by the five countries, they have asked the Commission to propose alternative measures and believe a decision to extend the import restrictions would be “purely political”, with Poland’s forthcoming general election looming over the discussion. 

Ukraine will be armed with depleted uranium anti-tank rounds that can aid its troops in piercing Russian tanks, the Pentagon has said, as Russia warns of “very sad consequences”. 

The controversial 120mm anti-tanks shells will be used to boost the performance of 31 M1A1 Abram tanks the US will also give Ukraine. Opponents of the weapons, such as the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, say the dust created by such weapons can be breathed in, while munitions which miss their target can poison groundwater and soil. 

While US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kyiv in a show of the United States’ continued support, a Russian attack on a crowded market in eastern Ukraine’s Kostiantynivka city on Wednesday killed at least 17 people and wounded 32 more. Ukrainian drones heading to three Russian cities including Moscow, Rostov-on-Don and the Bryansk region, were shot down overnight. 

Ferenc Liszt International Airport, Budapest

Other news from the region

Hungary’s government has submitted a formal offer to buy a majority stake in Budapest Airport in a transaction that could be valued at about four billion euros, potentially ending years of wrangling over the hub’s fate. An earlier bid put forward by a consortium led by the Hungarian government in 2021 collapsed due to the challenging economic environment the government was in at the time. The airport is currently operated by AviAlliance, a Germany-based airport management company.

French food giant Danone will invest 230 million zloty (50 million euros) to create a plant producing medical nutrition products in the city of Opole in southern Poland. The investment will expand a facility already run by the firm to allow it to produce food for people with special dietary needs, creating 50 additional jobs. The move comes after Danone’s acquisition of Polish medical nutrition company Promedica earlier this year. 

The ruling Georgian Dream party has initiated an impeachment inquiry targeting Georgia’s president, Salome Zourabichvili, an independent, for her visit to Europe to promote the country’s EU accession without permission from the Prime Minister’s Office. Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili’s administration, which supports maintaining closer ties with Russia and China than Zourabichvili does, said her trip amounted to contempt of the nation’s supreme law.  

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has vowed to ban the international community’s envoy, Christian Schmidt, from entering Bosnia and Herzegovina‘s Serbian entity, Republika Srpska. The announcement came just days after prosecutors charged Dodik for passing laws that would allow him to bypass or ignore decisions made by Schmidt, who is tasked with overseeing the civilian aspects of the Dayton agreement that ended Bosnia’s bloody civil war in the 1990s. 

In an open letter dated September 6, dozens of major international and Czech companies called on Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS/ECR) to legalise same-sex marriage so that their employees can live and work in Czechia without discrimination and prejudice. Same-sex couples in the country may currently enter civil unions but not marriages and cannot adopt children, and the companies argued unequal conditions cause unnecessary expenses.  

Hundreds of people protested on Monday in the capital of North Macedonia, Skopje, over allegations that patients at the state Oncology Clinic missed life-saving treatment because staff were stealing expensive drugs to sell on the black market. The organisers of the protest demanded that the last three health ministers take responsibility because they allege that the abuses have been going on for some time. 

Armenia said on Wednesday that it would host a joint military exercise with the United States next week, at a time of rising military tension with neighbouring Azerbaijan and open friction in its relationship with Russia. The Armenian Defence Ministry said the purpose of the Sept. 11-20 “Eagle Partner 2023″ exercise—in which 85 US soldiers and 175 Armenians will take part—was to prepare its forces to take part in international peacekeeping missions, but a Kremlin spokesperson still said news of the small exercise “causes concern”.

Following the mass seizure of weapons and ammunition from a house in the Serb-majority town of Zvecan in northern Kosovo on Tuesday, Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla reported he received a death threat from the ethnic Serb Northern Brigade, classified as a terrorist organisation by Prishtina. The commander of NATO-led troops in Kosovo said the region remains “highly volatile” even though the security situation has calmed since a major outburst of violence in May. 

Main photo: Rustem Umerov following parliamentary confirmation of his appointment as Ukraine’s defence minister. (Official Twitter/X account).

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The stores in Stepanakert are still open, but the shelves are empty. Food, medicine, toiletries, fuel — everything is in short supply in the de facto capital of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is internationally recognized as the territory of Azerbaijan.

The disputed region is inhabited mainly by Armenians. Goods are supplied via one access road, the Lachin Corridor, which connects to Armenia but has been blocked by Azerbaijan since December 2022, cutting the region off from the outside world.

The International Red Cross and Russian troops, who were monitoring a ceasefire agreement negotiated between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020, had until recently been able to deliver aid. But, in June, after a skirmish between Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers on the common border, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev tightened the blockade, leaving the enclave’s inhabitants on their own.

According to Armenian sources, about 120,000 people have been forced to endure the situation, though Azerbaijani officials say the number is significantly lower. In any case, the supply shortage in Nagorno-Karabakh has become so dire that Henrikh Mkhitaryan, the world-famous Armenian footballer and UNICEF ambassador, tweeted an urgent appeal in early August, calling for the blockade to be lifted immediately on humanitarian grounds.

A rally calling for the unblocking of the Lachin corridor and ending of the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh in Freedom Square, YerevanImage: Alexander Patrin/TASS/dpa/picture alliance/dpa

Talks between Armenia, Azerbaijan drag on

Armenia and Azerbaijan have actually been negotiating an end to the conflict for months. A breakthrough in the negotiations would be a huge step forward in a dispute that has been going on for 30 years. The first war between the two states broke out in the early 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and there have since been repeated incidents along the still undefined border.

As the Nagorno-Karabakh region lies entirely within Azerbaijan’s borders, the latter invokes the principle of territorial integrity in its claim to the area. However, it is inhabited by an Armenian majority, which is why Armenia insists on self-determination for its population. Parts of Nagorno-Karabakh already declared themselves independent in 1991, though no state in the world recognizes this. Not even Armenia — presumably to avoid making peace negotiations with Azerbaijan impossible from the outset.

In 2020, a second war broke out between the two states over the region, and a subsequent ceasefire brokered by Moscow helped Azerbaijan regain control of parts of the disputed territory. Despite Russian troops monitoring the ceasefire, deadly clashes continue to occur. Some 35,000 people are estimated to have died since the conflict began, with hundreds of thousands forced to flee.

Russian peacekeepers guard the Lachin corridor, the Armenian-populated breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region’s only land link with ArmeniaImage: Tofik Babayev/AFP/Getty Images

A ‘poisoned’ offer

Representatives from Baku and Yerevan have already met several times over the past two years in Brussels, Washington, and Moscow, with the aim of transforming the fragile ceasefire agreement into a lasting peace treaty.

There have been six negotiations under European Union mediation alone. In May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan surprised the country with the domestically controversial announcement that he would recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan as long as the Armenians there received comprehensive rights and security guarantees as a protected minority.

However, the self-proclaimed government of Nagorno-Karabakh, made up of ethnic Armenians and calling the region the “Republic of Arzakh” since 2017, has so far refused integration into Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani President Aliyev doesn’t seem interested in this solution, either. He has repeatedly called for the government and parliament of the “Republic of Arzakh” to be dissolved and for Armenians there to be integrated into Azerbaijan as “normal, loyal citizens.” This was a condition upon which Aliyev recently offered to supply the trapped Armenians with aid — something they promptly rejected as a “poisoned” offer.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan surprised many with a peace offer earlier this yearImage: Alexander Patrin/TASS/dpa/picture alliance/dpa

Conflicting geopolitical influences

The negotiations are further complicated by the interests of neighboring countries, particularly Turkey and Russia. Ankara more or less openly supports Azerbaijan. Given the ethnic and cultural similarities between the Turkic-speaking countries, each subscribes to a notion of “one nation, two states.” Turkey is also an important customer of Azerbaijani natural gas.

Russia, on the other hand, has a slightly more complicated position because it maintains ties with both former Soviet republics, though more intensively with Armenia, as it too has a predominantly Christian Orthodox population. Moscow’s preference is evidenced by the fact that while it supplies both parties to the conflict with Russian weapons, only Yerevan gets a preferential price. In addition, Russia maintains a military base in Armenia’s second largest city, Gyumri.

Still, in the ceasefire agreement most recently negotiated by Moscow, Azerbaijan regained control over large areas of Nagorno-Karabakh. Moreover, the Russian army, which is supposed to be a “peacekeeping force,” has been very restrained in the skirmishes that have repeatedly flared up along the border.

Moscow apparently wants to keep both countries dependent, but it has also had to significantly reduce its troop presence in the Caucasus due to its war against Ukraine.

While international diplomats say that a viable agreement could be reached by fall, there are still significant obstacles to overcome.

This article was originally written in German.