Truce At Last?

Elizabeth Pond

Elizabeth Pond is a Berlin-based journalist and the author of Beyond the Wall and The Rebirth of Europe.

The biggest surprise in Ukraine this month is the dog that didn’t bark. In the first week of September not a single Ukrainian soldier was killed in the Ukrainian-Russian battleground in the eastern tip of Ukraine; in fact, the big guns have now been silent there for two weeks. The combined Russian and local rebel forces “still violate [the year-long] ceasefire up to ten times a day” in skirmishes, says Andriy Lysenko, Ukraine’s presidential defense spokesman, but they have stopped shelling the Ukrainian lines with heavy weapons.

The article originally appeared in the Berlin Policy Journal on September 14, 2015. Continue reading here.

Elizabeth Pond is a Berlin-based journalist, has covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe for the past 30 years. She is the author of The Rebirth of Europe and Endgame in the Balkans among others.