A soldier stands guard in Sevastapol, now under Russian control since the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in developments that some fear mark the start of a second Cold War.
EPA/Zurab Kurtsikidze
Bloodshed in Europe and the Middle East against the backdrop of a breakdown in the dialogue between major powers is of enormous concern. The world is on the brink of a new Cold War, some are even saying…
Leaving Europe behind?
Mikhail Metzel/EPA/Ria Novosti
Michael Bradshaw, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
Much has been made of the agreement signed by Moscow and Beijing to get gas flowing from western Siberia to China. There is talk of Russia using the deal to offset its isolation from the west and circumventing…
“Ukraine is me”: Nationalists in Kiev.
EPA/Tatyana Zenkovich
Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall that ushered in the end of communism in eastern Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union, all the signs point to a new Cold War between Russia and…
Democracy in action in Donetsk.
EPA/Alexander Ermochenko
Much of the world may regard the elections that took place in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics on November 2 as illegitimate, but there appears to be little political will to avert the most likely…
Eyeball to eyeball: Putin on state business with Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan.
EPA
In this latest instalment in our series on Russia’s relations with its neighbours, we head south-east to Turkey. The former centre of the Ottoman Empire has been booming in the past decade – and Russia…
A woman votes from her hospital bed in Izyum, Kharkiv Oblast.
EPA/Sergei Kozlov
Ukraine’s snap parliamentary election on October 26 looks set to return a pro-Western parliament to Kiev – setting the country up for a long and tense winter. And while the elections seem to have gone…
Arsenyi Yatsenyuk needs support from other parties if he is to stay as prime minister.
EPA/Tatyana Zenkovich
Ukrainians have voted for a new parliament. The exit polls, in line with earlier predictions, indicate that the Petro Poroshenko Bloc – which also includes the UDAR party of Kiev’s mayor, former boxing…
The sweet smell of success: Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko.
EPA/Daniel dal Zennaro
The EU-Asia Summit in Milan, Italy, delivered little, if any, tangible progress to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. Relations between Russia and Ukraine’s major European allies remain just a few degrees…
When Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Victor Yanukovych, was ousted in late February, thousands of outraged and fearful people in southern and eastern cities took to the streets to demonstrate against…
Time for Brazil to pull in the harvest?
Sweeter Alternative
The Russian ban on the imports of some agricultural products from the US, the European Union, Australia, Canada and Norway has sparked much debate over the likely impact on American and European farmers…
Few bilateral agreements have ever had such turbulent history and implications as the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine. It was former president Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the agreement…
Are pay disputes making Putin sweat?
Sergei Chirikov/EPA
Sarah Ashwin, London School of Economics and Political Science
While Russia faces global disapproval over its role in Ukraine, president Vladimir Putin has trouble brewing at home. A shared sense of nationalist fervour had helped to underpin an approval rating that…
On May 26, the day after Ukraine elected Petro Poroshenko its president, a meme surfaced on the Russian Internet (or RuNet, as it’s colloquially known) depicting Ukraine as a chocolate bar. A reference…
Signed, sealed, delivered: Ukrainian president Poroshenko.
EPA/Sergey Dolzhenko
On the same day that it finally voted to ratify the EU Association Agreement that helped spark the Euromaidan protests in 2013, Ukraine’s parliament also voted to give self-rule to the rebels holding major…
There is at last perhaps some cause for optimism in the Ukraine crisis. A ceasefire agreement has so far held, and the Kiev government has announced that the bulk of Russian forces in Ukraine appear to…
If you are a Russian journalist on a trip abroad, the first question you’re asked once your companion finds out about your profession is: “How come you’re still alive?” Then comes something about how all…
EU in the room: failed high-level diplomacy in Minsk.
Alexey Druzhinin/Ria Novosti/KRE/EPA
As a fragile ceasefire just about holds in Ukraine, with shelling reported in the pivotal port city of Mariupol, the EU has announced a new round of sanctions against Russia. Targeted at state-owned firms…
NATO’s secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen is fond of saying that the alliance must now transform from a “deployed NATO to a prepared NATO”. But given the current crisis to its eastern flank, many…
Charting new waters.
EPA/Alexey Druginyn/RIA Novosti/KREM
While Western nations beef up economic sanctions and Nato discusses what stance to take toward Russia, the BRICS are maintaining tacit support for Moscow despite the Ukraine crisis. This is not entirely…
Peace in our time? Poroshenko and Putin shake hands in Minsk.
EPA/Sergei Bondarenko
It has been reported that the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian insurgents have signed a ceasefire agreement at the meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine in Minsk. This had hardly looked assured in…