Donbas
Reports on Donbas See all →
Belarus in the crosshairs
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is facing unprecedented turmoil at home. Protracted demonstrations have led to a string of politically motivated arrests. However, trouble is also brewing on the foreign front. The Kremlin appears to be losing patience with the strongman’s trick of playing off Russia against the West and could decide to intervene as it did in 2008 in Georgia or 2014 in eastern Ukraine.
Unraveling the Crimean knot
Any sensible person can see that status quo in Crimea is unacceptable, while restoration of the status quo ante is impossible. That means the scope of possibilities is very narrow. When looking for the least bad solution for the conflict between Russia, Ukraine and the West, perhaps two wrongs can ...
Opinion: Ukraine gridlocked
The evident stalemate in Ukraine is as much in Western policymakers’ heads as on the Donbas battlefront. Since the European Union has framed the conflict in moral terms that do not allow it to admit failure, it must maintain the pretense of success – giving Russia and Ukraine ample leeway ...
Challenges for Kiev
Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s defeat of Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine’s presidential election had more to do with the economics than relations with Russia. While resolving the conflicts in Crimea and the Donbas region will help boost economic growth, streamlining and cleaning up Ukraine’s bloated and partially corrupt bureaucracy will be the president-elect’s ...
GIS Dossier: Europe as a global player – looking east
Europe is politically diffuse and poorly armed for a great power at a geopolitical crossroads. Yet it has proved deceptively capable of leveraging the NATO alliance and its enormous economic “soft power” to expand eastward. Now its mettle is being tested as Russia – and, to a lesser extent, Turkey ...
