The news that the black boxes from Malaysia Airlines flight M17 has been handed over to Malaysian authorities, will lead to many questions about what information they have to offer. The two recorders have…
Ukraine mourns an unspeakable tragedy.
EPA/Sergei Dolzhenko
The unanimous vote in the UN Security Council on the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over rebel-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine is a welcome step. The resolution, drafted by Australia…
A train carrying the remains of crash victims is guarded by pro-Russian separatists.
EPA/Robert Ghement
US Secretary of State John Kerry has left the rest of the world in no doubt as to who America blames for the downing of MH17, appearing on several Sunday talkshows to point the finger at pro-Russian separatists…
Pro-Russian separatists guarding the crash site.
EPA/Anastasia Vlasova
The shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 in Eastern Ukraine on 17th June has placed the conflict which has engulfed that part of Ukraine into an entirely new context. It has transformed the…
A challenge for EU and Ukraine relations.
Zurab Kurtsikidze/EPA
Writing from Kiev, the city is boiling with rage. And now all Europeans too may boil with rage as 189 Dutch and smaller numbers of Belgians, British, French and Germans perished, when their Malaysian Airlines…
Power broker. Vladimir Putin.
Fernando Bizerra Jr/EPA
It remains to be seen precisely how and why the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed over the territory of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” in eastern Ukraine on Thursday. But whatever…
On July 17 2014, a Malaysia Airlines flight out of Amsterdam (MH17) was shot down over the disputed region of Eastern Ukraine, near Luhansk in the Donetsk region, relatively near the Russian border. The…
Show of hands: the UN Security Council.
EPA/Justin Lane
As the events surrounding the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine become clearer, more and more voices are claiming the plane may have been shot down by pro-Russian separatists in eastern…
Debris of the Boeing 777, Malaysia Arilines flight MH17, which crashed over the eastern Ukraine.
EPA
Normally, when a crashed aircraft’s black box is recovered, it can reveal exactly what happened to cause the disaster but in the case of MH17, the political instability between Ukraine and Russia could…
Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine have successfully defied the government in Kiev, but will have gravely harmed their cause if they brought down flight MH17.
EPA
The shooting down of flight MH17 has thrust the separatist conflict in Ukraine back into the international spotlight. The Ukrainian government and Russian-backed rebels have been locked in a military and…
Ukrainian separatist rebels under the banner of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ are reportedly responsible for shooting down Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine.
EPA/Stringer
The downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine represents considerable escalation of the military capabilities of the insurgency based around the “Donetsk People’s Republic”. Although…
Painting about peace in Kiev’s Maidan square.
Robert Ghement/EPA
Ukraine’s recent political crisis, a pro-Russian separatist movement and violence in the East has yet again drawn attention to the competing loyalties of Ukrainian citizens. Ukraine gained statehood in…
The political crisis in Ukraine clearly illustrates the formidable challenges faced by the country’s law enforcement institutions. The Berkut, or Golden Eagle, riot police have been disbanded after accusations…
Now that Otto von Bismarck, he knew what he was doing.
Jacek Turczyk/EPA
Karl Marx warned against conjuring up the past to explain the present, but really, we have been somewhere very like the Ukraine before. Benjamin Disraeli stood in the British parliament 150 years ago condemning…
The Russian response to what Moscow perceives as its three main security challenges – Western enlargement, China and terrorism/separatism in the Caucasus – has been expansionism. First in Abkhazia in 2008…
Installations of the main natural gas pipeline in the Boyarka village near Kiev.
Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA
Michael Bradshaw, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
As with the previous Russia-Ukraine gas disputes in 2006 and 2009, how we describe the current stand-off between the two countries is a matter of semantics. Those earlier disputes found solutions based…
Many think we may have recently seen an “earthquake” in European politics but tremors have been with us for a while. While policy makers scramble to make sense of the electorate’s motivations at the ballot…
Shake? Please? NATO Secretary General Rasmussen (l) visits Romania.
EPA/Robert Ghement
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), once again saved from potential irrelevance, has come to the fore in the West’s reaction to the Ukraine crisis. In the aftermath of its withdrawal from Afghanistan…
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and CNPC Chairman Zhou Jiping sign documents as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping look on.
Alexey Druginyn/Ria Novosti/AAP
The US$400 billion gas deal signed between Russia’s giant state-owned corporation Gazprom and China last week is 16 times larger than its predessor in the supply of gas to China - a US$25 billion LNG project…
Petro Poroshenko has won a clear first-round victory in Ukraine’s presidential election.
EPA/Yuri Kochetkov
With the outright victory of Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine’s presidential elections on May 25 now confirmed, hopes are running high for a new beginning that will deliver a swift way out of a protracted crisis…