EU association deals with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova have proven to be key drivers of reform in all three countries. The emphasis should now be on implementation, not simply legislative adoption.

Ukraine’s prisoner-of-war problem is becoming more intractable by the day, fueled by criminal tendencies and systemic failures of the Ukrainian state.

The fact that the process of prisoner exchanges is still incomplete after months of fits and starts volumes about the messiness of the situation in eastern Ukraine.

With less than a week left until the Ukrainian parliamentary elections, there is growing uncertainty about whether the new parliament will provide a boost to President Petro Poroshenko's flagging reform agenda and attempts to manage the extremely fragile situation in the east.

In August, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for early parliamentary elections to kick-start his reform agenda and to cleanse Ukraine of lawmakers who owed their loyalty to the ways and personalities of the pre-Maidan era.

Facing economic collapse, a winter without Russian natural gas, and a frozen conflict in the Donbas, a divisive election may be the last thing Ukraine needs. But on October 26, Ukrainians will head to the polls to elect a new parliament.

With tensions running high and diplomacy struggling to find a way out of the Ukraine crisis, inflammatory rhetoric violates the first rule of foreign policy: do no harm.