Section: Research Organizations & Think Tanks about Ukraine
One Year After MH17 Shootdown, Brazen Act Over Ukraine Still Poisons Atmosphere
Simon Ostrovsky will never forget the moment he learned that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had fallen from the sky, with 298 passengers and crew aboard.”I was on a train from Kyiv to Kharkiv reading my Twitter feed, and something came down about a plane crash. Somebody said it was a Malaysian plane,” the Soviet-born US journalist...
Crimean Government Indicates It Wants Greater Autonomy From Moscow
The puppet government of Crimea has unexpectedly clashed with its bosses in Moscow. On July 7, Crimea’s governor, Sergey Aksyonov, declared he would not allow the Russian federal government to force its own rules on the peninsula. His comments came after Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), at the end of June, briefly detained...
Minsk Armistice: Enforced at Ukraine’s Expense?
In Kyiv, on July 15–16, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland prevailed on President Petro Poroshenko and parliamentary leaders to accept constitutional liabilities toward the Russian-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk territories. Nuland’s intervention achieved its goal, but not without a severe political commotion in Kyiv. The...
The Air Tragedy That Condemned Putin’s Russia
It was a year ago last Friday (July 17) that the Boeing 777 Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a missile over eastern Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 298 lives. The shock of that tragedy awakened Europe and the wider global community to the grave risk that the localized armed conflict in Donbas...
5 questions every presidential candidate should answer: Europe edition
Twenty-five years since the fall of communism, the idea of “Europe whole and free” is under attack. The continent is threatened by the aggressive posture of Vladimir Putin’s regime but also by centrifugal forces in the European Union, particularly in Greece and in the United Kingdom.Shutterstock.comThe coming years will test viability of...
Russian Disinformation Alienates the West from Russian Periphery
The Russian Army has released a photo of a Ukrainian tank decorated with a swastika, yet the original Reuters photograph shows no such emblem. Russia also released a photo of a Ukrainian soldier covered in Nazi tattoos, but that picture was actually taken in 2005, inside a Russian prison. Europe is revolted by any reminders of its Nazi past,...
Vucic Presses Bosnian Serbs on Referendum, Vilnius Removes Soviet-Era Statues
Plus, Macedonian parties call for strengthening independent institutions, and the head of a Russian news agency says his social media sites are blocked. …read more Source: Transitions Online...
Could Russia Spoil Armenia’s Iranian Investment Dreams?
Expanded links with Iran could help Armenia break out of its isolation, but the Kremlin might have other ideas. From EurasiaNet.org. …read more Source: Transitions Online...
No One Feels Safe in the New Crimea
Sixteen months after Russia’s March 2014 annexation of Crimea, the peninsula’s human rights situation is getting progressively worse. The first wave of repression targeted mainly pro-Ukrainian activists and Crimean Tatars, while in 2015 the Kremlin’s victims have been Slavs: Ukrainians and Russians. Since early this year,...
Isolated Russia has little left to lose
The one-year anniversary of the tragic shooting down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine is an opportunity to take stock of the costs of Europe’s latest, biggest, and apparently most intractable security crisis. Twelve months after Russia-backed separatists were first accused of shooting down the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet, Europe’s...
