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…
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…
As I write this, the people of Gaza hopes for an end to the week-long Israeli bombardment which has killed more than 180 Palestinians – many of them civilians have been dashed after Hamas rejected the…
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…
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…
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…
“It all started with a word,” said Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski at the opening of a memorial to freedom of speech, “and the word was ‘freedom’”. The event completed three days of commemorations…
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…
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…
The presidential elections in Ukraine on May 25 were meant to offer the country the beginning of a way out of a protracted crisis. Some of the signs were quite positive. Presidential candidates were stressing…
The EU election is the Polish government’s first real strength test since it was elected in October 2011. The poll on May 25 kicks off an electoral marathon, which will culminate in the autumn of next…
Since the end of the Cold War it has become accepted knowledge that economic ties between the major powers prevent conflict. In a world of globalised production chains and capital flows the general argument…
The referendums on independence from Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk, defying Putin’s call to postpone, pose deep questions about what “independence” would actually mean – and whether it can actually be…
Vladimir Putin’s statements giving qualified support for presidential elections in Ukraine on May 25, calling on separatists in eastern Ukraine to postpone their planned referendums and announcing a pull-back…
Vladimir Putin has called for the postponement of the planned referendum in eastern Ukraine just four days before the vastly pro-Russian provinces were due to vote on secession. The Russian president also…
Ukraine is disintegrating before our eyes, with escalating anarchy, civil war and proxy war with Russia, and dozens killed in Odessa on Friday. Acting President Alexander Turchinov officially declared…
The outrage is palpable across the centuries. In the first issue of his provocative newspaper The North Briton, John Wilkes championed the “liberty of the press”. It was “the terror of all bad ministers…
The situation in Eastern Ukraine is turning increasingly violent and fractious, with the mayor of Kharkiv critically wounded by unknown gunmen and kidnapped observers still being held by pro-Russian militias…