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Atlantic Council blogs provide short-form analyses from Council experts and a wider community of global voices on the world’s most important news stories.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin

NATOSource

May 13, 2014

Europeans Dither on Defense While Putin Laughs

By John Vinocur, Wall Street Journal

On one hand, there are European countries reasonably bemoaning years of declining American leadership and resolve.

Europe & Eurasia NATO

MENASource

May 13, 2014

Top News: Morsi’s Pardons of Islamists to be Reviewed

By EgyptSource

Egypt’s Minister of Interior Mohamed Ibrahim said the ministry formed a committee to revise presidential pardons granted to Islamist “extremists” by former president Mohamed Morsi during his one year in office.

MENASource

May 13, 2014

Benghazi must not Overshadow Big Picture of Libyan Security

By Karim Mezran

Of Libya’s manifold challenges, deteriorating security has occupied most of the international community’s attention, particularly in the aftermath of the tragedy in Benghazi that claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in September 2012.

Libya

New Atlanticist

May 12, 2014

The Other Referendum in Eastern Ukraine

By Irena Chalupa

Amid the big news of the secessionist referendum in Donetsk and Luhansk, a second plebiscite, less noticed, asked voters in 14 districts whether they would prefer not to secede from those provinces, to remain part of Ukraine and under the rule of Kyiv.

Ukraine

New Atlanticist

May 12, 2014

Ukraine News Roundup | May 12

By Irena Chalupa

Ukraine: Part of America’s “Vital Interests”? from The National Interest The Battle in Ukraine Means Everything Fascism returns to the country it once destroyed from The New Republic  Russian History Is on Our Side: Putin Will Surely Screw Himself from The Daily Beast The Twitter War: Social Media’s Role in Ukraine Unrest Social media networks […]

Ukraine
REUTERS/Baz Ratner

UkraineAlert

May 12, 2014

DIRECT TRANSLATION: ‘How I Voted – Four Times – Against the Donetsk People’s Republic’

By Irena Chalupa

Russian-Sponsored Rebels Hold a ‘Referendum’ on Separation from Ukraine, But a Local Journalist Finds It a Farce Donetsk resident Ihnat Svyachyshyn sets off to vote in the May 11 Donetsk separatist referendum. He asks his neighbors, a couple in their mid-twenties to join him but they refuse. While they support a federalization of political power […]

Ukraine
REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

New Atlanticist

May 12, 2014

How Eastern Ukraine’s Chaotic ‘Referendum’ Might Reduce the Immediate Risk of War

By James Rupert

To Undercut Separatists, Kyiv Should Now Propose a Pro-Democratic Decentralization of Power Eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russian militants say yesterday’s chaotic simulation of a referendum gives them a popular mandate to secede from Ukraine. That claim, of course, won’t be taken seriously beyond the camp of the separatists and their Russian backers. But that exercise, along with […]

Russia Ukraine
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, April 10, 2014

NATOSource

May 12, 2014

Czech Republic Wary of Permanently Hosting NATO Troops

By Robert Muller, Reuters

The Czech Republic does not favor hosting foreign NATO troops as part of the alliance’s plans to boost its eastern wing over the Ukraine crisis, its Defense minister said, in sharp contrast to some of its regional peers.

Central Europe NATO

MENASource

May 12, 2014

Top News: Rebels in Southern Syria on the Brink of Turning on Each Other

By MENASource

Moderate opposition factions and Islamist rebels from the Nusra Front were on the brink of going to war with each other on Sunday night. Mediation efforts, under way since last Saturday’s capture of Ahmed Nehmeh, a commander in the western and Gulf-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), were continuing in northern Jordan in a final attempt […]

Russian Presiden Vladimir Putin in Crimea, May 9, 2014

NATOSource

May 12, 2014

The Battle in Ukraine Means Everything

By Timothy Snyder, New Republic

The territory of today’s Ukraine can very easily be placed within every major epoch of the European past.

Europe & Eurasia European Union