At the moment the Polish border with Ukraine has a human face. That of concern, despair but also of hope. Such was the experience we had at two, out of eight, border crossings: the pedestrian and vehicle crossing in Medyka; and the train crossing in Przemyśl. We visited them Saturday February 26th. It was the third day of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.

On February 24th, at dawn, Putin started a war not only against Ukraine, but against the whole democratic world. This is the beginning of his end. The Ukrainian people are doing their part. Do yours. Sign this petition and take action!

An interview with Linas Linkevicius, the former minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania. Interviewer: Vazha Tavberidze

This invasion is not an attack just on Ukraine. This is an attack on the whole free world.

On February 24 2022, the Russian army began a full scale attack against independent and free Ukraine.

The situation with Russian threats towards Ukraine once again illustrates the high level of instability in our region. While certainly security and geopolitics are right now at the top of the agenda, other types of instability also remain, including political, economic and social. In this issue, our authors help us get to the core of this instability and in some cases offer solutions for overcoming it.

In the context of the current crisis with Russia, can the European Union’s Eastern Partnership be able to recover some of the promise it had at the time of its founding? To what extent can it change without change inside the EU itself? Certainly, what the EU needs is not hard power but a hard edge.

In the midst of the greatest security crisis to engulf Europe since the height of the Cold War, the sixth summit of the EU’s Eastern Partnership on December 15th last year might easily be dismissed as a non-event. Whilst relations between Russia and the six members are a matter of high drama across Europe, the partnership attracts no more attention than a non-speaking part in a play. Provocative and discordant on most subjects, the international commentariat has no difficulty agreeing on one thing: the partnership’s irrelevance.

Growing Sino-American rivalry has directly influenced Vladimir Putin’s plans to restore Russia’s sphere of influence in our part of Europe. In order to create the country’s third empire, Putin needs to concentrate on three states: Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Of the three of these countries, the most important is Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden has continued to pursue a China-focused foreign policy ever since his election victory in 2020. This pivot to Asia is clearly not the only legacy from the previous Donald Trump administration. During the first decades of the 21st century, America’s increasing focus on China and the challenge of a potential war in South-East Asia influenced US foreign policy in other regions of the world, including Central Asia and Central and Eastern Europe.

The West’s lack of inner cohesion, slow reactions and a preference for dialogue provide the Kremlin with a chance to effectively play its own game. Putin surely discovered a long time ago that bluffing and good brinkmanship are enough for the West to do everything to prevent conflict. There is only one condition: it must believe that Putin's Russia is a “USSR 2.0”.

“I think that’s right,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on January 9th when asked by CNN if he agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to restore the Soviet Union. “I think that’s one of President Putin’s objectives, and it is to re-exert a sphere of influence over countries that previously were part of the Soviet Union.” This is exactly what the Russian president would like the West to believe. Whilst the head of US diplomacy was making this statement, Russian-American negotiations were about to start in Geneva.

Whilst Ukraine continues to struggle with various internal issues, its ongoing reforms have sent a clear message regarding its desires for western integration. The EU and NATO must now recognise Kyiv’s ambitions and respond in an equally enthusiastic manner.

Is the West ready to raise the stakes when dealing with the regime in Minsk? The answer to this question is not so clear. In fact, western states seem rather confused on how to act while the Belarusian regime continues to issue challenges.

Both Belarusian and Russian officials view the 2020 protests in Belarus as a western attempt to instigate a “colour revolution”. They see the events ultimately as a special EU and American operation in which the Belarusian people did not participate at all. Apparently, the ultimate goal of these protests was to overthrow the Russian authorities rather than simply those in Minsk.

The Eastern Partnership faces an uncertain future as the European Union cannot offer any viable alternative for the group’s best performers. EU resilience in the region is now under strain. Given the increasing global dominance of China and Russia’s aggressive foreign policy, will Brussels manage to remain a credible actor in the region?

The year 2021 was full of challenges for Georgia’s democratic future and its relations with its western partners. After the parliamentary elections in October 2020, Georgia entered a deep and protracted crisis that, as of writing, still haunts the country’s politics. Disagreements over the results of the elections led to deadlock in February 2021, when the police raided the headquarters of the largest opposition party to arrest its leader. Naturally, this raised concerns among local human rights advocates and democracy watchdogs.