Russia’s aggression against Georgia and Ukraine as well as its reluctance to resolve the frozen conflicts in the region demonstrate that Eastern Europe is again a contested geopolitical sphere between Russia and the European Union (EU). President Putin has now gone further, unleashing a range of active measures against Western democracies in an effort to destabilise the EU and achieve the lifting of sanctions imposed after his annexation of Crimea. By and large, these efforts have backfired as we witness the revelations of electoral interference in the United States and France.
To shore up his domestic support, Putin has also constructed …read more
Reading Room: A Difficult Neighbourhood
