Contrary to widely assumed western opinion, Ukraine is not pursuing decentralisation because the West tells it to, but because she has herself decided to do so. The reform helps combatting corruption and protecting Ukraine’s national sovereignty. Moreover, decentralisation practices in Ukraine can, in the future, become models for the entire post-Soviet space.

Hyperbolic warnings about allegedly disastrous consequences of a Tymoshenko presidency are demobilising western support for Ukrainian reforms and defence.

Should the West start preparing itself for a Ukraine under President Tymoshenko?

Ukraine's decentralisation reforms are changing the organisational structure of the country. What about its Constitution?

An ideological platform that is bringing Russian and Western right wing revisionists closer together.

The recently intensifying memory conflict around the interpretation of some Second World War events between Ukraine and Poland is distracting the two intertwined nations from their main international challenges today.

Western decision-makers should signal to the new East-Central European NATO and EU member countries that they can, and should, engage in cross-border multilateral coalition building with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. There is an urgent need for institutional structures that will make Eastern Europe’s grey zone, between Russia and the West, less grey.

Most interpretations of the current geopolitical instability in Eastern Europe focus on the intricacies of the region’s peculiar past, recent resurgent Russian imperialism and Ukraine’s specific significance for the Kremlin. While these and similar approaches address important themes, many such explanations tend to miss, or dismiss, the first and foremost cause and crucial aspect of the issue at hand. The current international crisis in Eastern Europe has arisen due to concerns over the East European institutional structure – or lack thereof. One can easily explain and assess the current tensions in Eastern Europe without much knowledge about the region by simply pointing to the organisational underdevelopment of post-Soviet international relations.

An interview with Andreas Umland, Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv. Interview originally conducted by Rzeczpospolita (Poland).

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 and wars in Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians – along with millions of other victims – living in the “bloodlands” (Timothy Snyder) were killed and terrorised 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.