Ukraine

Ukraine’s new president on Tuesday formally ordered Ukraine’s parliament to dissolve and called an early election for July, hoping to ride the wave of his electoral success to get his supporters into parliament.

Today, the Council extended the mandate of the European Union Advisory Mission (EUAM) in Ukraine until 31 May 2021. It also approved a budget of € 54 million for the next two years, an increase of more than 25%, which reflects the intensification of the mission's activities, including through the establishment of a second mobile unit, which will be deployed in the east and south-east of Ukraine.

Ukraine's Central Election Commission has formally declared Volodymyr Zelenskiy the winner of the country's presidential election, releasing final results from the April 21 runoff vote.

The UN’s political affairs chief has urged all parties to the peace plan protocol for eastern Ukraine known as the Minsk Agreements, to avoid “any unilateral steps” that could undermine efforts to demilitarize the eastern conflict zone. Rosemary DiCarlo was addressing the Security Council on Thursday in a meeting requested by Ukraine, and in the wake of Ukrainian presidential elections and the signing of a decree by Russian President Vladimir Putin a day earlier, that reportedly aims to allow citizens in parts of eastern Ukraine, to apply for Russian passports, under a simplified procedure.

The new decree makes it easier for people living in separatist-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine to obtain Russian citizenship. Ukraine's president-elect has called for more international sanctions over the move.

Ukrainian presidential candidates Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Petro Poroshenko, the incumbent president, won 30.24 percent and 15.95 percent of the vote, respectively, in the first round of the election on March 31, according to official results published by Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) on April 7.

A triumph for Zelensky, a slap in the face for Poroshenko and deja vu for Tymoshenko: The results of the first round in Ukraine's presidential election point to a harsh battle before the runoff ballot in three weeks.

President Vladimir Putin has marked the fifth anniversary of what Moscow considers the day Crimea became part of Russia by visiting Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula, as NATO, the United States, and the European Union again condemned what they called the "illegal" land grab.

What is happening in and around Ukraine is “unacceptable, the Chairperson-in-Office for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) told the United Nations Security Council on Thursday.

The commander of NATO forces in Europe, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, has said he wants to bolster Ukraine's defences against Russia's "increasingly aggressive" posture in the east of the country and the Black Sea.