New Atlanticist

Russian Human Rights Activists Challenge Putin on Crimea Seizure

By James Rupert

A Mathematics Professor Leads Dissenters Current and former official human rights advisors to President Vladimir Putin have issued a report that undermines his claim to have legitimately annexed Crimea – and they caused a stir this week by posting it on a Kremlin website. Three activists, including one current and one former member of the […]

Jarba, Syrian Opposition Council Pushes for US Support

By Barbara Slavin

On his first visit to Washington this week, Ahmad Jarba, president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), has faced a daunting challenge: convincing the Obama administration that his organization deserves more support, including lethal weaponry, to counteract the brutal tactics of a regime that appears to be winning Syria’s three-year-old civil war.

Nigerian Government Must Earn the Trust of Local Communities to Find Missing Girls

By Bronwyn Bruton

On April 14, the Nigerian terror group known as Boko Haram (which translates loosely into the phrase, “Western education is sinful”) broke into a secular, all girls’ secondary school in the small northern Nigerian town of Chibok. Dressed in Nigerian military uniforms, the militants tricked some 270 students into clambering into the backs of trucks, […]

Maidan is Ukraine

By Irena Chalupa

Ruslana Lyzhychko, a recipient of this year’s Atlantic Council Distinguished Humanitarian Leadership Award, is the most recognized public face of the Ukrainian revolution known as “Maidan.” This Turkic word for square (as in Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Independence Square) has become a synonym for the new democratic awareness and activism that Ruslana believes have turned Ukraine into […]

#BringBackOurGirls: Social Media Campaign Goes Global

The Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram delivered its most recent shock to Nigeria and the international community when its leader, Abubakar Shekau, threatened in a videotaped message to sell into marriage or slavery the approximately 230 schoolgirls the group abducted April 14 from a boarding school in the north of the country.

Putin’s Invasion of Eastern Ukraine: Is It Next Week or Never?

By James Rupert

Ukraine’s escalated violence over the past four days is just the event that seems likely to trigger the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian ground forces massed near its eastern border. Indeed, following the Ukrainian army’s counter-attack against Russian-backed separatists around the eastern Ukrainian city of Slaviansk, and the weekend fighting in the seaport […]

Despite Death Threats, Here is the News From Donetsk . . . .

By Irena Chalupa

Oleksiy Matsuka, 31 has been for a decade one of Donetsk’s most prominent journalists. In 2003, he founded Novosti Donbassa (Donbas News), a website to cover his home region. Matsuka soon built a reputation as a courageous investigative journalist, writing stories that most journalists in the Donbas (Donetsk Basin) region avoided. Last week, the Paris-based […]

Why Did Gunmen So Easily Take Over in Eastern Ukraine? Umm, Here’s Why . . .

By Irena Chalupa

How have pro-Russian militants taken over city halls and police stations across eastern Ukraine with such surprising ease? Ukrainian journalist Valentyn Chernyavsky decided to test that question in his hometown, the provincial capital of Cherkasy, about 125 miles south of Kyiv. He donned the uniform of a Russian separatist militant, grabbed a (fake but realistic) […]