... degree of co-operation. What's more, the European Union continues to be in the back seat of a process that threatens to tear apart the largest country in the continent outside Russia and which fundamentally affects the EU's relations with Moscow. Today's Ukraine is a failing state, essentially an object of great power diplomacy.
What is also becoming clear is that the world of hardball geopolitics, unashamed political horse-trading and open economic pressure is "another world" for many in Europe....
A couple of days ago in Washington, a former high-level U.S. government official mentioned to me that if a civil war breaks out in Ukraine, it would follow not the Bosnian scenario, but the Spanish one. Just as in the case of Spain in the mid-1930s, the civil conflict in Ukraine could rapidly escalate and internationalize, with major external powers getting actively involved and ...
In Eastern Ukraine, we are seeing an ingenious Russian plot unfold — for the second time. Russian servicemen, wearing no insignia, infiltrate into the area and, capitalising on marginal grassroots separatism, spark unrest. They establish control in a professional ...
The current crisis in Ukraine is expected to cause only a slight, short-term rise in “stress” immigration into Russia. However, in the longer term, the level of immigration from Ukraine to Russia is expected to fall, mostly due to Russia’s tarnished image,...
Beyond Kissinger’s Principles for Ukraine, Russia and NATO
Beyond Kissinger’s Principles for Ukraine, Russia and NATO
One of the great ironies of human experience is that the voice of “wisdom” in old age is often considered “utopian” or “unrealistic” ...
Even as Arsen Avakov, Ukraine's interior minister, vows to restore order in the country's east where thousands of protestors wave Russian flags and storm government buildings, a different kind of emergency is rising on Ukraine's south-western border. Transnistria, Moldova's ...
The profound and pervasive crisis in Ukraine is a matter of grave concern for Russia. We understand perfectly well the position of a country which became independent just over 20 years ago and still faces complex tasks in constructing a sovereign state. Among them is the search for a balance ...
... summer rains and, no less importantly, the EU market reached a point of saturation and stopped growing (EU gas consumption has been stagnating since 2006, while oil consumption has fallen).
Alexey Belogoriev
At the same time, the first transit crisis in Ukraine occurred during the winter of 2005-2006, which was then followed by an immeasurably more devastating crisis in January 2009. It was then that the political decision was made to gradually reduce gas purchases from Russia. Why does gas get so much ...
... militant political rhetoric, the pace of which is set by the United States and the European Commission, cannot but affect rational business thinking. The Crimean referendum and the potential for flashpoints that spark conflict to appear elsewhere in Ukraine necessarily mean a prolonged setback to Russian-European economic cooperation and partial freezing of Russian-American economic cooperation. But the main question is not how long this cooling of relations will last, but if there are real conditions ...
... and opinion pieces attesting to military movements here and troop and materiel organization there that can only possibly mean one thing: preparation for a massive Russian incursion into a whole host of different areas, most notably the Eastern half of Ukraine. There are very few American reporters venturing an alternative viewpoint (the accomplished Jim Maceda of NBC News is one of the few). Think tanks and academic institutes are not doing much better. The powerful and extremely influential Foreign ...
