Putin’s strong-arm tactics in Eastern Ukraine and ‘moral, family-based’ policies have won him ardent support from far-right European groups. But they should not be under any illusions...на русском языке
What President Putin has been pursuing during his months-long battle against Ukraine’s economy and society is the semi-collapse and semi-implosion of the Ukrainian state. But at what cost?
The EU has been right to interpret Russia’s foreign policy as both chaotic and driven by short-sighted or temperamental interests. However, the EU is wrong to view Russia’s foreign policy as a monolithic bloc in the hands of President Putin.
While Russia steps up calls for the US to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, its own abuse and mistreatment of Russian nationals who returned to the country from Guantánamo a decade ago is less well publicised.
Ukrainians have accepted the loss of Crimea, but discrimination against dissenters has already started and partial mobilisation makes them very apprehensive that they may be called on to defend their future in more traditional ways.
On Sunday 25 May, President Putin permitting, 36.5 million voters will go to the polls in Ukraine to vote for a successor to President Viktor Yanukovych, ousted after three months of protests, and over 100 dead
Vladimir Putin says that Crimea is another Kosovo. Angela Merkel says that they are completely different. Who’s right?
In his 18 March speech, Vladimir Putin cited the International Court of Justice 2010 opinion allowing Kosovo to declare independence as justification for Crimean separation. The cases are, however, very different.
As Crimea prepares for its referendum on Sunday, a lesson should perhaps be learned from an earlier, Balkan carve-up.
The Kremlin claims that its every step in Crimea fully complies with international law. But does President Putin understand that, under international law, Ukraine could either arrest or shoot those unmarked troops, as mercenaries or common criminals?
Several months ago the Crimean peninsula seemed to be the safest place in Ukraine, far from the confrontation between Viktor Yanukovych and Maidan. Now Crimea is occupied by an ‘army,’ but whose army is it?
The Kremlin sees events in Ukraine through the prism of its own domestic politics and is anxious to prevent the type of democrats-and-nationalists alliance that brought down Yanukovych. Its actions in Crimea may be shoring up its nationalist credentials at home but the fall-out could be more dange
