Foreign Policy Blogs

Eastern Europe

Sun Tzu’s Seven Searching Questions- Revisited

Sun Tzu’s Seven Searching Questions- Revisited

  A few months ago, I wrote about the early stages of the conflict in Ukraine through the lens of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. While it appears likely that the war will carry on into the foreseeable future, enough time has passed for us to make an honest assessment of each side’s relative […]

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On the Ukrainian Push, Russia’s Response, and Where to go From Here

On the Ukrainian Push, Russia’s Response, and Where to go From Here

The Ukrainian Army has made dramatic strides in the last few weeks. Ukraine’s tactical commanders have outfoxed their Russian counterparts, and by issuing a feint towards the south the UA has been able to earn substantial gains in the north of their country. The impact of these efforts have been compounded by the steady stream […]

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What to expect from a Russian rebound

What to expect from a Russian rebound

The first wave of the Russian offensive in Ukraine has fallen short of Russian autocrat Vladmir Putin’s ambitions. Most analysts deduced that Putin had hoped to achieve a decapitation strike of the Ukrainian government- taking Kiev and replacing Ukrainian President Vladimir Zolinski with a pro-Kremlin voice. Kiev has been threatened repeatedly through the course of […]

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Why Compromise in the Donbas Is Unhelpful || GLOBAL POLICY JOURNAL

Why Compromise in the Donbas Is Unhelpful || GLOBAL POLICY JOURNAL

The stark choice facing the Ukrainian leadership is even bleaker than many in the West might recognize. The alternative is not only and not so much between a self-sacrificing war, on the one side, and denigrating peace-deal with Russia, on the other. Instead, Kyiv’s possible partial satisfaction of Moscow’s appetite entails secondary domestic and foreign dangers that could turn out to be, in their sum, larger than the hazards of a new armed escalation today.

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Reshaping Ukraine’s Western Integration

Reshaping Ukraine’s Western Integration

There is widespread fear of an escalation of the current Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict into a large and prolonged inter-state war in Europe. This could lead West European governments to agree to Putin’s key demand of reneging on NATO’s future inclusion pledge for Ukraine and Georgia. Should this happen, the West needs to compensate the two countries for the de facto broken 2008 Bucharest NATO summit promise. Ukraine and Georgia as well as Moldova can be provided with official EU membership perspectives and an assurance that Brussels will start accession negotiations once the three republics’ Association Agreements have been implemented.

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Merkel’s Ambiva­lent Legacy in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe: German Ostpolitik in the Shadow of Russia’s Imperial Revenge

Merkel’s Ambiva­lent Legacy in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe: German Ostpolitik in the Shadow of Russia’s Imperial Revenge

When Angela Merkel took office as Federal Chancellor in 2005, she was more prepared for the challenges on the EU’s eastern border than any other West European head of government. However, Berlin had, already before Merkel’s take over of the chancellorship, sent wrong signals to the new neo-imperial leadership in Moscow by inviting Putin to the Bundestag in 2001 and starting the Nord Stream projects in 2005. Consequential missteps before and after Merkel came to power put German Ostpolitik on the wrong path in the new century. In 2014, there was only a partial correction of the Russia course set by Germany’s 1998-2005 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Today, politicians, diplomats and experts in Moscow likely wonder what has gotten into the Germans since the annexation of Crimea: Weren’t Russian special rights in the post-Soviet space an unwritten law of post-Cold War Eastern European geopolitics accepted by Berlin?

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Ukraine’s Low-Carbon Gas Potential and the European Union

Ukraine’s Low-Carbon Gas Potential and the European Union

Strategic investment into Ukraine’s energy industry, including its low-carbon gas generation and transportation system would not only have narrowly geoeconomic, but also wider geopolitical implications. Assistance to Ukraine would help Kyiv contain the Kremlin’s ongoing attempts to unleash further socioeconomic instability in Ukraine.

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Should the US Support Ukraine? A Debate in Washington, DC, and Elsewhere

Should the US Support Ukraine? A Debate in Washington, DC, and Elsewhere

Here comes a senior American commentator working at a leading Washington think-tank, publishing in one of the most influential US political magazines, and repeating exactly those talking points that the Kremlin has been spreading to justify its thinly veiled hybrid war against Ukraine for seven years now. This not enough, Carpenter uses the Kremlin’s favorite narratives to unapologetically call for an end of US support for Ukraine. What more could Moscow hope for?

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“Isolation”: Donetsk’s Torture Prison

“Isolation”: Donetsk’s Torture Prison

The Russia-controlled East Ukrainian separatists have been operating a small concentration camp in the city of Donetsk, Ukraine, for more than six years now. Outside any regular jurisdiction, men and women are being physically and psychologically tormented on a daily basis, in ways reminiscent of Europe’s darkest times.

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Should Ukraine Conduct Local Elections along the Donbas Contact Line?

Should Ukraine Conduct Local Elections along the Donbas Contact Line?

Current military-civil administration in eastern Ukrainian frontline districts need to be kept in place and partially reformed. Should the Donets Basin return to Ukrainian control, they could provide institutional templates for a temporary special regime within the currently occupied territories. On October 25th this year, Ukraine will hold its first nation-wide local and regional elections […]

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The Coronavirus Crisis as a Critical Juncture for Ukraine and the World

The Coronavirus Crisis as a Critical Juncture for Ukraine and the World

by Pavlo Klimkin and Andreas Umland Deliberations on the political repercussions of the ongoing pandemic for international relations and Ukrainian foreign affairs In their seminal 2012 study Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Daren Acemoglu and James A. Robinson identified the Bubonic Plague of 1346-1353 not only as one of the greatest […]

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Opportunities and Risks in Zelenskyy’s New Ukraine

Opportunities and Risks in Zelenskyy’s New Ukraine

What to make of the new political realities in Ukraine? Both, the presidential and parliamentary Ukrainian elections of 2019 delivered historic results. Ukraine never had a President with so much electoral support (73%), and so little connection to the country’s old political class. Moreover, independent Ukraine never had a parliament with as dominant a party […]

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Voting Advice Applications in Pre-Electoral Ukraine

Voting Advice Applications in Pre-Electoral Ukraine

PROвибір and other electronic instruments are helping Ukrainians to distinguish parties according to their political, socio-economic and cultural agendas Which party to vote for in an election? In Ukraine, like in countries around the world, people are making their political decisions based on a range of factors from emotional attraction to rational calculation. In the […]

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How Distrust toward Voting Advice Applications May Lower the Quality of Ukraine’s Parliamentary Elections

How Distrust toward Voting Advice Applications May Lower the Quality of Ukraine’s Parliamentary Elections

Kyiv’s main media outlets keep ignoring Ukraine’s new voting advice applications So far, Ukraine’s major newspapers and electronic media have largely ignored the freely available novel Ukrainian voting advice applications (VAAs) designed to help voters to make more informed and rational decisions on 21 July. VAAs are computerized instruments that summarize in circa 15 to 40 statements […]

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Critical Questions for Ukraine’s New President: A List of Issues for this Year’s Reform Agenda and Kyiv’s Relations to the West

Critical Questions for Ukraine’s New President: A List of Issues for this Year’s Reform Agenda and Kyiv’s Relations to the West

On 20 May 2019, Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was inaugurated. Later this year, the European Parliamentary elections will lead to the formation of new EU leadership in Brussels. Finally, Ukraine’s upcoming parliamentary elections this summer or autumn will likely reconfigure much of the – if not the entire – Ukrainian governmental elite, and lead […]

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