Section: Atlantic Council (USA)
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Putin?
Russia’s cyberattacks and its aggression in Syria and Ukraine have created a climate of concern leading up to the US presidential election, but, rather than give in to hysteria, the next administration must consider policy approaches that manage the relationship with Russia and are focused on common interests, a professor of political...
Kremlin Actively Plotting to Destabilize Ukraine with Mass Protests, Leaks Show
Russian President Vladimir Putin hates color revolutions more than just about anything else. They set him on edge. Now it seems his regime has embraced mass-based protests to destabilize Ukraine.On October 25, the Ukrainian hacker group CyberJunta published a trove of emails purportedly from the official government email account of Vladislav...
Why the Revelation of Officials’ Cash, Cars, and a Church Will Change Ukraine for Good
In a bout of extraordinary transparency, 50,000 Ukrainian officials have declared their assets and incomes and it is easily accessible to the interested public. A staggering amount of wealth has been revealed and this very act is likely to have changed Ukraine for good. As declarations arrived on the publicly accessible register, it recorded the...
Erdogan: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Russian Encirclement
Less than six months ago, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly complained that the Black Sea had become a Russian lake and sought regional and NATO cooperation against this threat. Russia and Turkey’s long-standing relationship was on the rocks, especially after Turkey had shot down a Russian fighter plane over Syria in November...
Why Is Ukraine’s Political Class Trying to Roll Back Reforms?
Since the Euromaidan revolution, Ukraine’s leaders have repeatedly committed themselves to fighting graft. Former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk promised that all corrupt officials would be prosecuted, current Prime Minister Volodymyr Groisman vowed an “intolerance of corruption,” and President Petro Poroshenko campaigned as a...
More Proof Ukraine is Changing: Opaque Defense Sector Embraces Reform
In December 2015, the anticorruption watchdog Transparency International warned that Ukraine’s defense sector faces “a high risk of corruption.” TI named the country’s opaque procurement process as the highest-risk area for corruption. Assessing the defense spheres of NATO members and partner states, TI gave Ukraine a D on an A to F...
Don’t Expect Quick Resolution to Europe’s Only Active War
The most disputed point about the Minsk agreements has been whether to hold local elections in the Donbas before Ukraine regains control of its border with Russia, or after. Ukraine has insisted that security and the return of the border should precede elections, while pro-Russian separatists and Moscow have been pushing for the opposite, as...
The Doctor Is In: Ukraine’s New Health Minister Already Shaking Up Sclerotic System
Health care in Ukraine has not worked in the past—not for hospitals, clinics, doctors or nurses, and most important, not for the Ukrainian people, regardless of where they live or work, unless they are fortunate enough to pay under the table to receive the most basic care.Entrenched, bureaucratic, and corrupt interests, wielding a combination of...
With Pipeline, Russia Sustains Dominance of Turkish Gas Market
Russia’s decision to go ahead with Turkish Stream, an offshore pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Turkey, cements its dominance of the Turkish gas market. In political terms, the revival of Turkish Stream—or TurkStream as Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy company, now terms the project—epitomizes the entente developing between...
Old Ukraine Launches Campaign against Ukraine’s Most Influential Woman and Top Banker
An attempt is underway in the Ukrainian parliament to deprive the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) of its independence and oust its governor, Valeriya Hontareva. This would be a major reversal of Ukraine’s economic reforms and must be stopped.In the last two years, Ukraine has carried out its most fundamental economic reforms since its...
