Carnegie Moscow Center
The main players in the Ukrainian crisis must take urgent steps to avoid the danger of a big war.
In August, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for early parliamentary elections to kick-start his reform agenda and to cleanse Ukraine of lawmakers who owed their loyalty to the ways and personalities of the pre-Maidan era.
Facing economic collapse, a winter without Russian natural gas, and a frozen conflict in the Donbas, a divisive election may be the last thing Ukraine needs. But on October 26, Ukrainians will head to the polls to elect a new parliament.
By turning Russia into a war state, President Putin has unleashed a process he cannot stop and made himself hostage to suicidal statecraft.
Ukraine needs more than the current level of Western assistance. But the Ukrainian government also needs to pull its weight, promising (and delivering) transparency.
Leonid Kuchma deserves credit for stepping forward at a moment of national peril. A realist and truth-teller of Kuchma’s calibre is a strikingly rare commodity in Kyiv and the West these days.
The Ukraine crisis has betrayed fissures in the Russo-Kazakh relationship. It is difficult to predict a post-Nazarbayev Kazakh policy toward Russia, but developments in Ukraine suggest that future Kazakh leaders will have to deal with a new source of friction with the Kremlin.
This summer’s crisis in eastern Ukraine has made the European Union and Belarus keen to develop a more constructive relationship with each other.
Separatists across Europe are hailing Scotland's referendum, but they also know that breaking up is a traumatic process.
Even a threat like Islamic terrorism won’t force Russia and the Unites States to make security collaboration a higher priority than geopolitical rivalry over Ukraine.