Security Exchange News

For the first time since the Euromaidan protests in 2014, Ukraine is set to face presidential elections. President Petro Poroshenko is running for re-election amid a pool of nearly 40 candidates. Alongside domestic issues of corruption, rising poverty levels and public distrust of the government, Ukraine also faces several external challenges ahead of the vote on 31 March.

President Petro Poroshenko has signed a decree to implement martial law in 10 out of 27 oblasts in Ukraine. The decree was overwhelmingly approved by the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, and is set to last for 30 days. Martial law was proposed after an altercation involving the Russian military and the Ukrainian Navy in the Kerch Strait, located in the Azov Sea in eastern Ukraine. Tensions in the region remain high over the eastern Ukraine conflict, which broke out after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. The further escalation came after a massive bridge was built over the strait to connect Crimea to mainland Russia. According to a 2003 treaty signed between Russia and Ukraine, both countries are allowed to patrol the strait’s waters. However, a potential military escalation in the eastern Ukrainian conflict came after Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) seized three Ukrainian Navy vessels and detained more than two dozen crew members. Ukrainian authorities confirmed that there were counter-intelligence officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) amongst the sailors detained.

Since the conflict in eastern Ukraine broke out in early-2014, more than 10,000 people have been killed as pro-government forces clash with Russian-backed separatists based in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Although an EU-brokered deal was agreed in Belarus in September that year, both sides continue to refuse to abide by the guidelines of the Minsk Agreement. The agreement initially failed to deliver a significant solution for the conflict, leading world leaders to meet again in 2015 to revamp the accord, which ordered a ceasefire in Donetsk and Luhansk and allowed the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organisation of Security Cooperation in Europe (SMM-OSCE) to be deployed. Four years after the agreement was first signed, tensions continue to be high.