How changing Ukrainian society impacts the chances for peace
In this commentary for PONARS Eurasia, IISS Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia Samuel Charap analyses the changes in Ukrainian society since the 2014 crisis. …read more Source: International Institute for Strategic...
What lessons Trump, Putin can learn from the 1986 US-Soviet summit
What lessons Trump, Putin can learn from the 1986 US-Soviet summitThree decades on, as the leaders of Russia and the United States prepare for their first meeting since the 2016 U.S. election, the 1986 Soviet-American summit opened a new path in relations between the nuclear superpowers. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American...
What Putin is up to, and why he may have overplayed his hand
Each year on December 20, the Russian intelligence community pays homage to its enduring guardianship of the Motherland. It was on this date in 1917, six weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution, that Vladimir Lenin established the Cheka, an acronym for “Emergency Commission.” Over the ensuing decades, the commission’s nomenclature and...
The Prospects of Freezing the Conflict in Donbas
The almost three-year-long war in eastern Ukraine (Donbas) could become another frozen conflict in the post-Soviet area. The reasons for this are the lack of agreement between Ukraine and Russia on the future of the region and Moscow’s support for the Donbas administration by, for example, giving military support and recognising the civil...
Russian-Hungarian déja-vu?
By Grigorij Mesežnikov. Photo: TAST/APRelations of Central European countries with other states are nowadays mainly determined by their belonging to the collective West. Central European countries’ membership in the EU and NATO which resulted from the complex social transformation and geopolitical turnover after the fall of the communist...
Ukraine Takes Russia to UN Court Over Rebel Funding, Crimea
March 6, 2017 …read more Source: Center on Global...
Blogger fined for saying the USSR invaded Poland in 1939 takes Russia to Court in Strasbourg
Russian blogger Vladimir Luzgin has asked the Court in Strasbourg to defend his right to state quite correctly that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939. He was left no alternative after Russia’s Supreme Court agreed that this unpalatable truth constituted ‘rehabilitation of Nazism’. …read more Source:...
How Likely Is an Irrational US Presidential Order to Use Nuclear Weapons?
Nagasaki bomb, via WikipediaBESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 417, March 5, 2017 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: There is no scientifically valid way to predict US presidential irrationality. Nor is there any analytically acceptable way for an American president to foretell the nuclear outcomes of any considered policy decision. There is another, less...
How to Partner With Putin
Improving relations with Russia, a priority for President Donald Trump, is a worthy goal. He could make progress by seeking to partner with Russia on some issues, like North Korea, while keeping up heat on others, such as aggression in Ukraine. …read more Source:...
In search of Putin’s philosopher
Politics Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000 and began reasserting Russia’s influence on the international scene, Western pundits have tried to discern the Russian president’s “brain” or “guru”, convinced that they would be able to identify some shadowy Svengali-like character who would inspire him. Unfortunately, this quest is...
