The current stand-off between Russia and Ukraine has left the European Union looking perhaps flatfooted and ineffectual. It is an unfair reflection of reality. The EU is not a military alliance and so…
Imagine you’d organised a much-anticipated party but because of something you’d said or done nobody turned up? To dismiss the party in the first place would smack of sour grapes but this pretty much captures…
Talks between US secretary of state John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Paris, followed after a week of high-level diplomacy, including a phone call between presidents Obama and Putin…
In a historic speech to both houses of the Russian parliament on 18 March in support of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin drew a bold comparison between the Crimean crisis and the recognition…
Just as Venice risks disappearing beneath its waters, it is making a remarkable political reappearance. The Venetian Republic existed for more than 1000 years until it came to an end at the hands of Napoleon…
The invasion of Crimea and Russia’s military build-up on Ukraine’s Eastern borders have set a difficult task for Western diplomacy. Since Russia is a nuclear power, despite being militarily diminutive…
World War Two didn’t end in Ukraine in 1945. After the devastation of German occupation, which left the country in ruins and millions dead, Ukrainian nationalists continued to murder thousands of Jews…
Facebook can be a confusing place. For the follower of Ukrainian and Russian politics the messages could not be more different. At the same time that “Euromaidan PR” is posting pictures of “Putler” and…
No amount of international sanctions will reverse Russia’s takeover of Crimea. But unless Vladimir Putin can now extend his influence over eastern Ukraine, the incomplete triumph could undermine him. If…
The Russian invasion and rapid absorption of the Crimean peninsula might seem like the spark ready to ignite a new Cold War. In fact, given the feeble Western response so far, the more likely outcome is…
The international community has been impotent since Russia responded to the November 2013 Ukraine crisis with force, culminating in annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea this month. The G7’s…
The rapid escalation of the situation in Crimea has led us faster than we might have thought to consider if and how Russia might unleash energy policy as part of its geopolitical strategy. President Vladimir…
A wave of street protests, some violent, has been sweeping Venezuela. These attracted international media coverage, which often presented protests as the expression of a national crisis that anticipated…
Now that Ukraine has lost Crimea, which seems certain to be reunited with the Russian Federation, the future of the remainder of the country depends on what happens in the urban, industrial and populous…
“In the information age, success is not merely the result of whose army wins, but also of whose story wins.” The words of Harvard scholar Joseph Nye have been borne out in Ukraine. At the moment, the Moscow…
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has now apparently formalised the annexation by announcing two new laws that make Crimea and Sevastopol subjects of the Russian Federation and has signed a treaty to…
Much of the discussion on the current Ukraine crisis concerns European energy security and dependence on Russian gas. The different reactions of EU member states to the Ukraine crisis highlight an underlying…
Crimeans have voted by a huge margin to secede from Ukraine. According to early reports released after 50% of the ballots had been counted more than 95% of votes were in favour of joining Russia. EU foreign…
The Crimean crisis is sliding from bad to worse, not least for the inhabitants of what until a month ago was an idyllic peninsula waiting for the glory of springtime. As the ultra-right and neo-Nazi thuggery…
Many of the images of pro-Russian demonstrators in Ukraine, from Crimea to Donetsk, have shown them wearing black-and-orange-striped ribbons. The symbolism here is opaque to most Western observers, it…