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Tag: Putin

Russia’s war is undermining the world order

Since 2014, Moscow has been transforming global affairs in the interests of international revisionism. This has already caused considerable damage to international law and the global rules-based order. In fact, the political implications of Russia’s attack reach far beyond Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

Going into its 11th year of war against Ukraine, the results of Russia’s attack on its alleged “brother nation” are ambiguous for the Kremlin. On the one hand, its image as a supposed military superpower has suffered greatly. Since 2022 the war has become an international embarrassment for the Russian leadership, army and weapons industry. Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine also led to the loss of western partners, markets and investors.

May 6, 2025 - Andreas Umland

Will Trump’s peace-making efforts increase the likelihood of a bigger war?

While the US tries to present itself as an honest broker engaged in shuttle diplomacy, it is difficult not to perceive its efforts as favouring the Russian side. Even before negotiations with Russia had started, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said Ukraine’s NATO membership and the possibility of recapturing territories occupied by Russia were off limits.

After two months of botched peace-making efforts, the administration of Donald Trump has made little progress in bringing the war in Ukraine closer to an end. Simultaneously, the new US government has sought to disengage from Europe and exposed its weakness. If Trump decides to put pressure on Ukraine to end the war on terms that favour Russia, it will make a bigger war in Europe practically inevitable.

May 6, 2025 - Yulia Kazdobina

Why the Trump-Putin negotiations on Ukraine might bury the Eastern Partnership

Since 2009 the main EU instrument of engaging and integrating with the region of Eastern Europe has been the Eastern Partnership programme. However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the evolving geopolitical situation have forced the EU to rethink its approach towards the aspiring states in the region. The new administration in the United States has added a new dimension to this complex dynamic. Where do these states stand in their bid for EU membership today?

With Donald Trump's return to the White House, the geopolitical dynamics surrounding the war in Ukraine have undergone significant shifts. Trump's rhetoric emphasizes the necessity of ending the war, whereas Ukraine’s priorities are not limited to the cessation of hostilities but also include the terms under which the conflict concludes, i.e. the provision of security guarantees.

May 5, 2025 - Tatevik Hovhannisyan

Belarus and Russia: not in one but different baskets

In spite of their shared desires to challenge the status quo, the Belarusian and Russian oppositions do not always see eye to eye. This is largely the result of a continued assumption that Belarus is uniquely tied to its larger neighbour. The status of Belarusian exiles in the EU today subsequently depends on the recognition of these differences.

April 8, 2024 - Hanna Vasilevich

When crises become political tools

In a crisis situation nothing is certain. We all share the unpleasant feeling that we are slowly losing the firm ground beneath our feet. And this crisis mood colours also our view of the future. Yet, there are actors who consciously and willingly cause crisis situations with the intention to profit from the ensuing chaos.

Today the word “crisis” is on everyone’s lips. And this is not without reason. In the last few years we have been confronted with an accumulation of crisis situations. It started with the Donald Trump presidency and continued with the COVID-19 pandemic, which not only caused a huge death toll, but also destabilised the world economy. The crisis further deepened with Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, undermining the international rules-based order that was built after the Second World War. The war led not only to bloodshed and hardship, but also further deterioration in an already dire economic situation, boosting inflation. So, here we are today!

February 16, 2023 - Marcel H. Van Herpen

A nuclear crisis or nuclear discourse?

A nuclear threat which induces the fear of even a possible attack can serve as the perfect bogeyman. Vladimir Putin knows this all too well. Thus, he uses it to generate hysteria among western societies. As of now, he is at least partially successful.

In the 1970s the Albanian communist regime started to massively construct anti-nuclear bomb shelters all around the country. In total, some 175,000 bunkers were built. Many were located on mountain slopes, others as concrete-covered underground passages. Their purpose was to protect Albania’s communist leaders, Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu, from the consequences of a nuclear attack. History shows, nonetheless, that none of them were ever used for their intended purpose, while half of them were not even used for drills.

February 15, 2023 - Kinga Gajda

Russia-Ukraine: Only one will remain

The Russo-Ukrainian War, which on February 24th 2022 transitioned from a hybrid phase to full-scale conventional war, is not only attracting the attention of the whole world. It also gives us reason to think about what the configuration of relations between the two states will be after the end of the war – a war in which only one of the states may have a chance to survive intact.

The ideological underpinnings of the Russo-Ukrainian War are contradictory. On the one hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin published his article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” last summer, which was filled with amateur arguments about the Ukrainians’ lack of right to their own statehood. On the other hand, on February 24th 2022, Putin, among other things, declared the need for the "denazification of Ukraine", though he failed to find an adequate explanation for this thesis. Official Russian ideology allows for combining the rhetoric of a “fraternal people” with the “Nazi regime that prevails in Ukraine”.

December 8, 2022 - Yevhen Magda

Russian and Rashism: are Russian language and literature really so great?

In the western media and capitals, voices can be heard that what journalists report from Ukraine under the relentless Russian onslaught should not be identified with Russian language and culture. Why not? This callous attitude rightly offends Ukrainians, because it is none other than Russian soldiers and officers, educated and bred on “great Russian literature”, who keep committing heinous crimes in Ukraine.

Following Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine in early 2022, the novel term rashism (рашизм) rapidly coalesced for referring to and negatively assessing the mixed-bag fascist-inflected ideology of neo-imperialism that the Kremlin deploys for justifying and promoting its actions. Yet, in the West too little attention is paid to the Russian language’s role in this ideology.

December 8, 2022 - Tomasz Kamusella

What happens after Russia falls

Most western experts predict Ukraine will win the war with Russia. When it does, we should allow the Russian Federation to dissolve.

Western politicians want borders to stay the same. Stability is good for capitalism. That is why Olaf Scholz has stalled arms shipments, sending in the first six months of the war enough weapons to keep Ukraine from losing, but not enough to turn the tide. This is why, even after Russia’s atrocities in Mariupol, Bucha and Borodyanka came to light, and even with proof of the daily shelling of homes, preschools, and hospitals in Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Odesa, French President Emmanuel Macron sought to help Vladimir Putin save face. Western leaders also cling to the status quo because they fear Putin will nuke Ukraine. This is an intimidation tactic also employed by the Soviet Union. But Putin is not suicidal.

December 7, 2022 - Helen Faller Nick Gluzdov

The political psychology of war

Political ideologies are influenced not only by socio-demographic factors, but also by psychological variables such as personal needs, social identity processes and information processing. It is difficult to give a simplistic answer as to why people follow the ideological constructs of lies. The rejection of information, the instrumentalisation of the media and the erasure of dissenting voices, as well as the creation of confusion and fear, create weaponised narratives aimed at undermining civilisation and the personal as well as cultural identity of the opponent.

The current Russian war in Ukraine raises many questions about the human willingness to use violence and especially so when the justifications for war are based on false and fabricated claims. Systematic manipulation and ideological indoctrination have been clear parts of Vladimir Putin's leadership style for quite some time now. He has almost perfected the tactics of psycho-political governance. This is accomplished through certain tactics and mind tricks that mobilise people to support the war or even participate in it.

July 14, 2022 - Rasan Baziani Raze Baziani

Russia’s targets: children, pregnant women, civil institutions and infrastructure

Not a day goes by without a war crime being deliberately committed by Russia in Ukraine. Documenting these crimes is a huge task that cannot be done by just one organisation. What is needed here is an alliance of various organisations, media groups and volunteers, both abroad and on the ground. They need to document Russian atrocities, sort them, process them for the media and forward them to the authorities for sanctions and prosecution.

No crime is too big for Vladimir Putin to commit, no lie too absurd to utter. This was true even before Russia's troops officially invaded Ukraine on February 24th. The images from Ukraine bring back memories of Grozny in Chechnya and Aleppo in Syria. There, Russian planes also destroyed homes, clinics, schools and other civilian facilities through mass bombardments. The West remained silent when the Russian army was rampaging through Chechnya and Syria. The West apparently did not care about the people there and they did not want a confrontation with Putin. In particular, the war against Syrian civilians was a test for the Russian army.

April 25, 2022 - Jan-Henrik Wiebe

Why Russians still regret the Soviet collapse

In 2019, a Levada Centre poll revealed that 66 per cent of Russians regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union while just a quarter did not. This represented an increase of 11 per cent in ten years. In the same time, Russia’s economy shrank by 23.2 per cent. The most stated, and consistent, reason for regret was the “destruction of a unified economic system”.

On December 25th 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev admitted defeat live on Russian television. The red flag came down from the Kremlin after more than 70 years. Thirty years later, Muscovites found themselves voting in a referendum on whether to restore Felix Dzerzhinsky’s statue to Lubyanka Square (headquarters of the FSB, formerly the KGB). Its toppling symbolised the rejection of Soviet socialism and a repudiation of the October 1917 revolution, which few initially believed in. Yet since 1991, a clear majority of Russians have consistently regretted the USSR’s collapse.

April 25, 2022 - James C. Pearce

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