Arsen Pavlov – the infamous “Motorola” – was killed on October 16th in Donetsk. For those who have been following the situation in Donbas from the beginning, he was one of the most recognisable faces of the war. Almost from the first day of the conflict, he fought alongside the separatist forces and in two and a half years he advanced from an anonymous soldier to the commander of Sparta – one of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s divisions. His story documents both the history of the war and its tragic consequences.

The 2008 military reform programme in Russia was launched to address the technological and organisational weaknesses of the Russian military which became particularly visible during the Russia-Georgia war. The programme has been focused on the update of military hardware as well as enhancement of combat readiness for local and large scale engagement operations through structural and organisational improvements across all branches of the Russian army.

Over the past two years, many scholars in defence, security and other areas of study have attempted to examine and explain the Russian engagement in the Ukraine crisis through a broad range of conceptual approaches. Such concepts as asymmetric warfare, full spectrum conflict and hybrid warfare have been among the most frequently used conceptual approaches to decipher Russian activities in Ukraine. In this regard, hybrid warfare has been predominantly used to give meaning to Russia’s swift annexation of Crimea and current destabilising activities in eastern Ukraine. Many scholars have claimed that Russia is elaborating upon this hybrid warfare doctrine which was first successfully applied in Ukraine. Also, in their view, there is a high likelihood of such hybrid warfare techniques being replicated by Russia elsewhere in the region.

As the war in eastern Ukraine reached its peak in 2014, 157 of the 442 people seeking refuge in Portugal were Ukrainian. In 2015 at least 368 Ukrainians followed suit, making up around 42.4 per cent of all asylum requests in Portugal that year. Only a few of them are granted refugee status, but almost all receive at least some humanitarian protection. Emine Shykhametova was one of them. This is her story.

I often say that what happened in Polish-Ukrainian relations after the fall of the Berlin Wall was a geopolitical revolution. I compare it to the French and German reconciliation in the 1950s. While that laid the foundation for a new post-war Europe, a Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation creates the possibility of this construction extending further East. Moreover, the stakes in Polish-Ukrainian relations always were, and indeed continue to be, about more than just Poland and Ukraine.

A review of Richard Sakwa’s Frontline Ukraine. Crisis in the Borderlands. Published by I. B. Tauris, London, 2015.

Interview with Volodymyr Kostyrko and Yevhen Ravski, artists and creators of a series of paintings titled “Ukraine. Waiting for a hero”.  Interviewer: Zofia Fenikowska

Vadym Maznichenko, a 30-year-old construction worker, lived a regular life in the suburbs of Kyiv, when in summer of 2014 he was drafted to war in eastern Ukraine. He returned after several months, having lost his leg and hand. He could not get a prosthetic hand in his native Ukraine then, and laughs loudly when I ask about the artificial leg the state provided him.