New Atlanticist

Chechnya’s Leader to Russian TV: ‘I Did Not Send’ the Chechen Militiamen Fighting in Ukraine

By Irena Chalupa

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-allied president of Chechnya, has taken to Russian television to deny that he has sent any of his Chechen fighters to join the Russian-backed separatist militias in eastern Ukraine.

Nigeria’s Missing Daughters: What a Hashtag Might Do

By Justine Jablonska and James Rupert

On the night of April 14, 2014, armed men of Nigeria’s puritanical Boko Haram movement drove cargo trucks across the arid scrubland of northeast Nigeria, rumbling up an unlit, dirt road in the town of Chibok. They stopped at the Government Girls’ Secondary School. Shouting in the dark, they ordered the more than 200 boarding […]

To Liberate Ukraine, Get the Maidan Back in the Fight

By James Rupert

Let’s consider for a moment what has worked, and not worked, in Ukraine’s fight for freedom from Russian domination. What worked was the Maidan – the massive, determined and (almost completely) non-violent protest movement that overthrew the corrupt, Kremlin-dependent President Viktor Yanukovych. What has not worked has been the Ukrainian government’s patchwork counter-insurgency offensive against […]

Is the Crisis in Ukraine Pushing Sweden Towards NATO?

The crisis in Ukraine, as well as increased tensions in the Baltic Sea region, has stoked the public debate on security and defense in Sweden. On May 26, the Institute of International Affairs brought Nordic, European, and US perspectives together for a discussion on the future of Swedish defense cooperation and specifically its relationship with […]

Russia Allows – or Organizes – Chechen Fighters to Reinforce the Secessionist War in Ukraine

By James Rupert

Chechen Militiamen Talk to Western Journalists About Their Mission It’s clear this week that Russian government is allowing or actively organizing an unknown number of battle-hardened Russian fighters from Chechnya and nearby regions to reinforce the Russian-led militias battling to seize control of two provinces in southeastern Ukraine. The entry of fighters from Russia’s North […]

Storify: #ACGhani with Afghanistan Presidential Candidate Dr. Ashraf Ghani

The stakes could not be higher. Afghanistan faces an historic presidential election on June 14 with a runoff between frontrunners Dr. Ashraf Ghani and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. 

Kremlin Awards Medals for Courage (and Pension Bonuses) to Russian Journalists Who Cover Ukraine ‘Objectively’

By Irena Chalupa

An essential asset in the Kremlin’s not-quite-covert sponsorship of the secessionist warfare in southeast Ukraine has been its ability to use Russia’s mass media to shape the story for populations at home in Russia and in much of the former Soviet Union. President Vladimir Putin signaled the importance of this propaganda war this week in […]