President Andrzej Duda’s veto of two laws this month–they would have subordinated Poland’s independent courts to the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS)–delayed briefly the campaign of the Catholic right-wing PiS to bring all three branches of governance under its…
Tillerson Flips Putin
In a three-hour refueling layover in Ukraine on Sunday US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson scored a little-noticed judo flip on that judo master, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Suddenly the big question is no longer last week’s worry in the…
Gunfight at the Ukraine Corral
2016 promises to be a decisive year for Ukraine. The sudden resignation on 3 February of Economics Minister Aivaras Abromavicius – and the immediate sharp fall of Ukraine’s sovereign bonds – suggest that the showdown is at hand, much sooner…
Will Ukraine Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?
Kiev has won an improbable victory by holding Russia’s military behemoth to a stalemate in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s undeclared war on Ukraine. After a year of intensive shelling during a poorly observed truce in the Donbas, the big guns…
Debunking an urban myth
It’s time to debunk the lingering urban myths that Germany has resisted imposing sanctions on Russia over its undeclared war on Ukraine and might once again desert the West in a flirtation with Russia. True, Chancellor Angela Merkel favors smart…
Harbingers of Transformation
A few bright spots on Europe’s troubled periphery Even as the future of the European Union’s neighborhood remains under threat, a few developments on the EU periphery – in Ukraine, Romania, and Serbia – show that civil society and rule…
A Useful Stalemate in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s undeclared war on once-fraternal Ukraine has destroyed Moscow’s influence on Kiev, forged genuine Ukrainian identity in resistance and ended in a roughly stable stalemate in the eastern 3% of Ukraine that Russia now controls. However bitter…
Truce At Last?
The fighting seems to be dying down in eastern Ukraine. This would mean “advantage Kiev.” There are growing signs that twelve months after the first Minsk agreement was signed, an armistice is taking hold in eastern Ukraine. It would be…
The Waiting Game
No, the West has not (yet) lost Ukraine in Vladimir Putin’s Russian roulette, and the fragile Minsk truce and Western sanctions on Moscow over its land grab in Ukraine have not failed. A more nuanced reading of the current state…
A Farewell to Arms?
(Part 2/2) Link to Part 1: What Next for Ukraine? Four rival scenarios Analysis of the Ukraine crisis by Ukrainian-American historian Alexander Motyl and German Chancellor Angela Merkel differs sharply from that of John McCain and John Mearsheimer in that it…