The US’s Baltic and Adriatic Charters could become templates for embedding Ukraine and Georgia as well as, perhaps, Moldova and Azerbaijan into a provisional multilateral security structure. By Iryna Vereshchuk and Andreas Umland It is remarkable how strongly some international organizations’ coverage of the East-Central European and South Caucasian post-Soviet space has come to […]
Four factors make further tensions between Russia and Ukraine along the shores of the Crimean peninsula and Azov Sea probable. On 25 November 2018, at the Kerch Strait, Russia attacked as well as captured three Ukrainian navy vessels, and arrested their 24 sailors. The maritime clash indicates that the focal point of the […]
At the “Valdai Discussion Club” in February 2012, Putin accused the West of employing “a matrix of tools and methods to reach foreign policy goals without the use of arms but by exerting information and other levers of influence . . . to develop and provoke extremist, separatist and nationalistic attitudes, to manipulate […]
On November 25, three Ukrainian naval vessels, two 54-ton gunboats (technically, Gyurza-M-class armored artillery cutters) and a tug, were traveling from Odessa around the Crimean Peninsula and toward the Sea of Azov, en route to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. As they approached the Kerch Strait, the access route from the Black Sea to […]
Hyperbolic warnings about allegedly disastrous consequences of a Tymoshenko presidency are demobilizing Western support for Ukrainian reforms and defense My recent article “What Would a Tymoshenko Presidency Mean?” for the Ukraine Alert of Washington’s Atlantic Council has caused indignation among numerous Ukrainian experts and journalists – some of them hitherto close colleagues and professional friends. […]
The prominent Western commentator of post-Soviet affairs Taras Kuzio has recently come forward with a barrel of English-language attacks on Ukrainian opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko – so far, the clear front-runner in Ukraine’s upcoming presidential elections in March 2019. Kuzio has placed several critical and partly denigrating texts about Tymoshenko in reputed analytical outlets, such […]
In Soviet mythology, the health of a country’s economy, national power, and influence in the world are directly linked to the performance of its oil and gas industries. The famous Russian gas project, Nord Stream 2, threatens to disturb the European Union family, emphasizing the contrasting interests of various EU nations. The Castro 10 vessel […]
The 1973 Sinai War was likely the most precarious conflict in the Arab-Israeli Wars. Much of the battle was supplemented by American and Soviet Cold War technology that matured in the Vietnam War and was used to brutal effect over the deserts of Sinai. Weapons systems like the stationary SA-2 missile and SA-3 missile kept […]
Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism. By Charles Clover. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia. By Mark Bassin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship. Edited […]
Western comments on Russian domestic and foreign affairs have, during the last years, become more and more gloomy. Among other topics, this pessimistic discourse (to which I too have contributed) features Putin’s neo-imperial plans for the post-Soviet area, the many varieties of post-Soviet Russian ultra-nationalism, the fragility of the geopolitical grey zone between the Kremlin-dominated […]
A Russian four engine IL-20 naval reconnaissance aircraft was shot down seemingly by accident over Syria by Syrian air defense. While initial reports lack significant details, early information seem to point out that due to a possible Israeli missile attack, Syrian air defense was targeting incoming missiles or planes and locked on the IL-20 by […]
What are the origins of the armed conflict that has been raging in eastern Ukraine since 2014? Which role did Russia play in the emergence and escalation of the originally unarmed confrontation, in the Donets Basin (Donbas), after the victory of the Euromaidan revolution? When, how and to what degree exactly did Moscow get involved? […]
[Translated from Ukrainian, by VoxUkraine.] The Kremlin media’s well-known narrative of a supposedly almost unanimous support among Crimea’s population as well as of the allegedly profound historical justification for the annexation has many supporters not only in Russia, but also among numerous Western politicians, journalists, experts, and diplomats. Often, these commentators consider themselves – in […]
Since spring 2014, Ukraine suffers from a full-scale war in the Donets Basin (Donbas). For the solution of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation, Western and Ukrainian political analysts, opinion- and policy-makers, civic activists as well as diplomats need to jointly implement an agenda of re-imagination, prioritization, pacification and re-integration. The Donbas conflict should be understood anew, approached […]
The official investigation of the rather obvious case of the MH17 disaster by the Joint Investigation Team has been excruciatingly slow. Already, on 17 July 2014, the day of the shooting, it was clear that this missile could have had only come from a regular Russian army unit. Who else would have had the opportunity […]