Here is today's situation map of eastern Ukraine by the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
By RFE/RL's Georgian Service
TBILISI -- Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili has invited his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, to Georgia.
Georgia's presidential administration said on February 23 that Margvelashvili held talks with Poroshenko in Kyiv, where he participated along with several EU presidents in a February 22 March of Dignity commemorating pro-European protesters killed in a crackdown by the previous Ukrainian government last year.
Last week, the Georgian Prosecutor-General's Office said it officially asked Ukraine to extradite Former President Mikheil Saakashvili and former Justice Minister Zurab Adeishvili to Georgia.
They are wanted on criminal charges that critics of the current Georgian government say are politically motivated.
On February 13, Poroshenko announced the establishment of the International Advisory Council on Reforms and appointed Saakashvili to lead it.
Saakashvili left Georgia after his presidency ended in November 2013. Adeishvili, who is now in Kyiv, has consulted Ukraine's pro-European government on democratic reforms.
Lively Twitter discussion right now on German leadership to counter Russia, sparked by @AnneApplebaum's recent column, titled The Risks Of Putting Germany Front And Center In Europe's Crises.
In the column, among other things, Applebaum argues:
Merkel’s modest demeanor, and possibly her gender, have made German power easier for others to tolerate. But German power has also been palatable for the past half-century because it was always exercised in concert with others. At the time of the euro zone’s creation, it was tacitly understood that Germany and France would run it, in conjunction with the rest of the participants. But since the financial crisis of 2009 weakened Italy, Spain and France, Germany has dominated euro-zone financial politics because nobody else can. Apparently, no one is able to help manage Europe’s security crisis either. Nobody ever imagined a world in which Germany would be negotiating directly with Russia — or that France would be too weak, Britain too inward-looking and the United States too uninterested to object.
The risks, both for Germany and for everybody else, are high. If the Greek financial crisis ends in fiasco and a Greek withdrawal from the euro zone, the backlash against Germany could turn into a backlash against all of the European institutions that Germany is perceived to run.
The risks in Ukraine are even greater. Merkel has put her personal stamp on a cease-fire agreement she cannot enforce — and if it fails, there is no Plan B. She has, it is true, hinted at one: Ukraine could give up its eastern provinces, build a “Berlin Wall” around them in the form of a demilitarized zone, tighten its borders and gain time to rebuild its state. But for that plan to work in the longer term, the West would have to treat the rest of Ukraine like it once treated West Germany, reinforcing it economically, politically and militarily, in order to deter Russia.