Section: CXSSR
These Guns Have Never Been Silent
They say that to the East there is a cease-fire in place, a promise by the Russian conscripts, special operations forces, and locals allied with them not to shoot at the legitimate government of Ukraine and its representatives; and a promise by Kyiv to reciprocate this guarantee. Whenever the former break their promises, this is reported as...
Elections in a World Falling Down
A specter is haunting Eastern Europe, and its name is Russia. Europe and the U.S., too slow to respond, are allowing that specter to change the way Eastern Europe sees the world. Ukraine has held two elections in a row with its sovereign territory being carved up by Russians and Russian-backed forces. Today, as the cease-fire crumbles again and...
Putin’s New Hot Frozen Conflict
It has been quite a year for Vladimir Putin, and a mark of shame to the West and the institutions of international law it thought it had created. In mid-2013, it became increasingly obvious that the Russian adventure in Georgia had neither been a one-off nor a taste of things to come. Putin had learned two things from 2008: The first, that he had...
The Sakharov Prize: Awarded to the Deserving Mukwege
The photo attached to this piece is of a man who has spent years treating women for brutal, organized, repeated, systematic rape. For his work, he has been beaten and shot at, his children held hostage, his life in constant danger. He works in a country that is in no meaningful sense a post-Westphalian state. The authorities are often indifferent...
More Questions on the Yunus Nomination for the Sakharov Prize Arise
Professor Mahmoud Al ‘Asali, an Iraqi law professor and devout Muslim in a portion of Iraq controlled by ISIS, openly stood up to the murderous thugs who had taken over that part of his country. Their threats of murder and second-class citizenship against the ancient Christian population, he stated, were unacceptable and wrong. He challenged...
Russia’s Baltic War
Having failed to check Russia’s desire to reconstitute its empire in Ukraine, the world now looks on as the Russian campaign in the Baltics picks up steam. The latest news is that of an Estonian agent apparently kidnapped from Estonia and charged with espionage in Russia. The aggregate total of the number of people who believe...
And Then They Marched Off to War: Azerbaijan and Armenia on the Precipice
For over twenty years, Armenia has occupied huge swathes of Azerbaijan, in violation of written and customary international law. For over twenty years, Armenia’s war crimes and atrocities, its occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding provinces, its ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijani refugees — all have stagnated, festering and all but...
Anyone But Yulia
Ukraine is wounded as I have never seen it. The last several months have taken a toll on its people, and today, an old imperial master is slowly dismembering a country too shell-shocked and too trapped to fully respond. Abandoned by a West that is both too timid and too lethargic, riven by internal strife, and with an economy teetering on the...
Toward a Unified Theory of Russian Empire
Reports from Ukraine’s security services — allowing for the usual fog of war — that known fighting elements from Moldova’s breakaway Transdniester region have been active in Eastern Ukraine are a sign of several, related, ominous developments in the recent efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to resurrect a Russian...
Georgia’s Mixed Signals and the Eastern Partnership’s Future
The events of the last five months have brought home the dangers of a blase attitude for Europe. It is something of an open question as to whether that lesson has been learned. Georgia may be putting the question to the test. As everyone has once again learned, Georgia lost control of its two longtime breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and...
