Section: Atlantic Council (USA)
Why Crimea’s Blockade is Necessary
Since September 20, Crimean Tatar activists and other protesters—mostly from the Right Sector—have been blockading the flow of goods from mainland Ukraine to Crimea. The Kyiv government has neither formally supported nor criticized the move. The reaction among analysts, observers, and bloggers has been mixed—from enthusiasm to caution and even...
Made in Moscow: Religious Freedom Abuses Continue in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine
“We cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated,” US President Barack Obama said on September 28 at the UN General Assembly. He was condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its aggressive moves in eastern Ukraine.Much of the world has decried these acts and their most...
For Decentralization to Work, Reformers Must Support Legislation for Strong Local Governance
As the August 31 grenade attacks, rioting, and violent protests at Ukraine’s Parliament—the Verkhovna Rada—demonstrated quite literally, the Ukrainian decentralization effort is an explosive issue. Constitutional amendments granting local communities greater governing responsibilities have sparked widespread criticism, both in Ukraine and...
Ukraine’s New Police Are an Expression of a “Civil” State
Almost two years after the Euromaidan demonstrations began, most Ukrainians agree that the pace of reforms has been largely disappointing. While many former civil-society activists hold key positions in the government and parliament, corruption continues to plague the country and state institutions cannot provide basic services.Amid the...
Snapshots of Ukraine’s Five Hottest Elections
Ukrainians go to the polls on October 25 to elect mayors and city councils. These local elections matter more than one might expect. The likely passage of a constitutional amendment on decentralization by parliament later this year will give the newly elected mayors and councils more autonomy and authority than ever before. …read more...
A Bold and Optimistic Strategy for Europe
US President Barack Obama recently derided critics of his foreign policies as offering merely mumbo-jumbo. Yet everyone can plainly see the administration’s shocking degree of across-the-board strategic incomprehension and incompetence in Europe and the Middle East. In fact, European Union diplomats publicly admit that confidence in US...
A Three-Pronged Strategy to Deal with Putin
Atlantic Council’s James L. Jones, Jr. recommends a toolkit that includes economic, political, and security components The United States must develop a three-pronged approach that includes economic, political, and security components to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “retrograde ambitions in favor of the peaceful and...
The Forgotten War: A View From Ukraine’s Frontlines
For a brief moment, it felt like déjà vu. As an officer with the Canadian Armed Forces, I visited several hot spots, witnessing my share of misery and destruction. Now I am in the Donbas, the war-torn region of eastern Ukraine.Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has struggled to shed its Soviet colonial past and the remaining vestiges of...
Evolution, Not Revolution, Is the Way to Save Ukraine, Says Leading Anti-Corruption Crusader
Russian President Vladimir Putin is pivoting and wants to withdraw from the Donbas but keep Crimea, according to Iegor Soboliev, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s anti-corruption committee.”He wants to give it back to us right now. He doesn’t need the Donbas,” he said in an interview on October 5.”Unfortunately,...
The Donbas Black Hole
What Russia hoped would be a small, victorious war has turned into the “geostrategic disaster of a new cold war,” writes Volodymyr Horbulin, a respected foreign policy analyst currently advising Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.In an article in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Horbulin argues that the main participants in the war have exhausted...
