New Atlanticist

Weekend Violence in Ukraine Threatens Peace Efforts

Last week’s agreement in Geneva, meant to avert wider conflict in Ukraine, was faltering as the new week began. Pro-Moscow separatist gunmen show no sign of surrendering government buildings they have seized. The images below are from the cities of Donetsk and Slaviansk. A gunbattle in Slaviansk left an uncertain number dead.

Slaviansk: Gunfights, Disappeared Journalist—and the Mayor is Missing

By Irena Chalupa and James Rupert

Ukraine Crisis Centers on City North of Donetsk Slaviansk, a district center of about 120,000 people in northwestern Donetsk province, is increasingly the simmering epicenter of Ukraine’s crisis – and not only because of the gunbattle yesterday that has re-escalated tensions in the east. The masked soldiers and militiamen who control access to the city […]

Amid Chaos, a Humiliating and Dangerous Defeat for Ukraine

By Irena Chalupa

In Russia’s takeover of southeast Ukraine – which President Vladimir Putin is characterizing as a recovery of old Russian provinces lost in the 1920s – this week’s ineffectiveness and weakness of Ukraine’s government and armed forces are visible almost everywhere.

As China Builds Ability to Attack Satellites, Here is How US Should Respond

By Bharath Gopalaswamy and Dylan Rebstock

As searchers in the Indian Ocean inch toward finding the disappeared Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, a reminder of the rising role of China in space is that the critical first step in learning the plane’s fate was an innovative analysis of routine satellite data – and that Chinese space assets played an unusually prominent role […]

The Unthinkable Happens in Europe: Russia Invades Ukraine

By Taras Kuzio

Russia has invaded Ukraine. This is the only conclusion to be reached from evidence that has built up in the past few days. Groups of armed men wearing soldiers’ uniforms and working in military formations have fanned out throughout Donetsk province (oblast), and to some extent the adjoining Luhansk province, taking over police stations, Ukrainian […]

NATO and the New Conventional Deterrence

By Henrik Breitenbauch

Russia’s assaults on Ukraine this spring are about to revive an old idea within NATO that has not been in vogue since the Cold War: conventional deterrence . Russia’s ready use of military force in Ukraine, Georgia and beyond puts its non-NATO neighbors very much at risk of military intervention. President Putin’s fracturing of the region’s […]

In the War for Ukraine, Russian Gunmen Seem Organized, But No-One Else

By Irena Chalupa

Amid the fighting that has spread across towns in southeastern Ukraine, local Russian- and Ukrainian-language websites and news organizations depict a battle in which squads of Russian gunmen are moving and fighting in tight, militarized formations to seize more government buildings and police headquarters. They are fearsomely aggressive, heavily armed, and well organized. The government […]

US Ex-Ambassador to Ukraine Urges US Military, Intelligence Help for Kyiv

By James Rupert

A former US ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, is urging the Obama administration to begin providing direct military help to the government in Kyiv, saying new violence by Russian-backed gunmen in eastern Ukraine appears to reflect a Russian government escalation of the crisis. “The United States should provide Ukraine with anti-air and anti-tank equipment, along […]

How Washington’s Polarization Endangers Nuclear Arms Control

By Jofi Joseph

The Global Treaty Banning Nuclear Test Explosions is Increasingly at Risk Five years ago this month, President Obama won international applause for his landmark speech in Prague calling for a world free of nuclear weapons – a commitment intended as a central organizing principle of his national security framework. But progress on that “Prague Agenda” […]