Why Ukraine’s Hope for NATO Membership Is Understandable, But Will Remain Unfulfilled

For obvious reasons, Moscow’s aggression against Kyiv has led to a marked growth in Ukrainians’ support for, and salience of, accession to NATO. During the last two years, Ukrainian public opinion has made a U-turn from skepticism against the Atlantic alliance to its enthusiastic embrace. Until 2013, almost two-thirds of Ukraine’s population was strictly against NATO membership. Today, around half of the Ukrainians explicitly want to join the alliance, with only a relatively small minority speaking out against. Kyiv is both actively introducing NATO standards in its army, and pressuring the West to finally open NATO’s doors to Ukraine

The Contradictions of Post-Euromaidan Ukraine and the Russia Factor

The Kremlin’s “hybrid war” on the Revolution of Dignity has been distracting pro-Western forces, in Ukraine’s civil society, public administration and Western diaspora, from pushing through reforms

Intermarium: The Case for Security Pact of the Countries between the Baltic and Black Seas

A main reason for the recent escalation of tensions in Eastern Europe is the absence of an effective security structure encompassing such militarily weak countries as Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. While Ukrainian public opinion has recently made a U-turn from a rejection to an embrace of NATO, the Alliance will not be ready to extend its commitments farther east anytime soon. Although future enlargement of the Alliance is possible, Ukraine’s confrontation with Russia as well as Moscow’s anti-Western stance would have to decrease significantly for that to happen. Recently, the opposite tendency was on display: The more aggression the Kremlin has shown, the less likely it is that the North Atlantic Council will open its doors to new members in conflict with Moscow

The Ukrainian Government's Memory Institute Against the West

Historical remembrance and national reconciliation are touchy issues - especially when they concern large wars, mass murder, and suffering of millions in the recent rather than far-away past. Ukraine’s memory of the nation's Soviet history is primarily concerned with the enormous number of victims of Bolshevik and Nazi rule over, and wars in, Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians - along with millions of other victims - living in the "bloodlines" (Timothy Snyder) were killed and terrorized by Europe's two most murderous totalitarian regimes. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians collaborated to one degree or another with both of the killing machines - a considerable challenge for Ukrainian memory policies

Why and How a Combined UN/EU Peacekeeping Mission Could Disentangle the Donbas Conundrum

How to solve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the Donets Basin? Until now, the international community – the OSCE, and especially Germany and France, within the so-called Normandy Format – has been trying to mediate bilateral talks between Kyiv and Moscow. The activities of the so-called Contact Group, with considerable support from Berlin and Paris, have led to the wellknown Minsk Agreements. With the delay, these agreements have, in combination with other factors, such as the collapse of world energy prices and growing effects of Western sanctions on Russia, achieved a decline of military activity since summer 2015. Yet, the agreements have neither led to a full ceasefire, nor to any serious steps towards a return, under Kyiv’s control, of the occupied areas and the Russian-Ukrainian border in the Donbas

Reluctance and Reality: The Case for More Effectual Economic Sanctions against an Increasingly Bellicose Russia

What should be done about an increasingly aggressive Russia? The past few weeks have brought more evidence of Moscow’s move away from international norms and law. From continued denials of complicity in the MH17 tragedy and the bombing of a humanitarian convoy in Syria to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent exit from the Nuclear Security Pact with the US, Russia’s behavior is diverging further from the rules-based consensus of the post-Cold War world. This is in spite of Western sanctions that were introduced against Moscow in 2014

Unexpected Friendships: Cooperation of Ukrainian Ultra-Nationalists with Russian and Pro-Kremlin Actors

This descriptive analysis details and explains often paradoxical contacts between Russian and Russia-related actors, on the one side, and post-Soviet Ukrainian far-right parties such as Svoboda (Freedom), the National Corps, the Right Sector, and Bratstvo (Brotherhood), as well as of some other ultra-nationalist groups in Ukraine, on the other. The investigation also covers Ukrainian far right connections to Moscow-related Ukrainian oligarchs, the Yanukovych regime of 2010-2014, and other Kremlin-related actors beyond Russia's borders. It starts with a survey of Ukrainian ultra-nationalist parties and then details contacts of Ukrainian right-wing extremists with various Russian ultra-nationalist groups, pro-Russian actors in Ukraine, as well as with Kremlin-related actors in Russia. It finally briefly examines the cooperation of Ukraine's far-right with non-Russian - mostly European Union - actors who have voiced pro-Putinist views or collaborated with Russia. The study uses primary and secondary sources in the Ukrainian, Russian, English, and German languages. These sources include press reports, party documents, interviews, previous analyses, and investigations by agencies such as Bellingcat. The introduction and conclusions provide some historical contextualization and political interpretation of this paradoxical aspect in the evolution of the Ukrainian far right

Five minutes with Andreas Umland: “Russia could solve the conflict quickly by simply withdrawing its support from the separatists”

The situation in Eastern and Southern Ukraine remains extremely complex, following two referendums being held in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk on the issue of establishing ‘self-rule’ from Ukraine. In an interview with EUROPP’s Managing Editor Stuart Brown, Andreas Umland discusses the differences between the situation in eastern/southern Ukraine and what took place in Crimea, the military dimension to the conflict, and what actions from the EU and Russia could help resolve the crisis