Europe & Eurasia

How the West Can Stop Russia’s Escalating War in Ukraine

By Maksym Khylko

This month, Russia stepped up military pressure on Ukraine, concentrating about fifty thousand troops along its border with Ukraine, using its proxy militias to shell Ukrainian government positions in the Donbas, and threatening Kyiv with “a big war.” The current escalation indicates Russian discontent with Ukraine’s refusal to make unilateral concessions such as allowing the […]

Secretary of Defense Carter on Russia and NATO

By Ash Carter, Foreign Affairs

[W]e continue to have the magnetic power to attract everyone around the world. As I travel around the world, I see that they all want more—more association with us, more contribution from us.

Ukraine Has Every Right to Play Hardball With Its Creditors

By Josh Cohen

As Ukraine fights Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas, the government is simultaneously engaged in a battle with its foreign creditors for the debt relief it desperately needs to prevent a full-scale economic collapse. Private investors hold about $19 billion of Ukrainian debt. To stave off disaster, the International Monetary Fund and other western donors agreed […]

In Greece, It’s Splitsville for Syriza

By Ashish Kumar Sen

Greek voters will line up behind Alexis Tsipras in next election, says Atlantic Council’s Fran Burwell Greek voters will rally behind Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who lost part of his Syriza party August 21 after he was forced by creditors to abandon his anti-austerity stance, says the Atlantic Council’s Fran Burwell. “My guess is that […]

A Powerful Case for Swedish Membership in NATO

By Tomas Bertelman, Johan Molander, and Sven-Olof Peterson

This image of a Russia encircled by hostile forces, including an aggressive and growing NATO and European Union, was created to legitimize the regime’s actions.

Ukraine Steps Up Efforts to Recover Stolen Assets Abroad

Two Kyiv-based women—a lawyer who heads a state agency created to reclaim stolen assets abroad and a social activist-turned-politician who’s made a career out of exposing official corruption—spoke August 20 in Washington about their efforts to clean up Ukraine. Olena Tyshchenko is director of the Agency for Asset Recovery at Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. […]

Russia, Not Ukraine, is the Questionable Partner

By Melinda Haring

In its August 12 editorial, “Shaky Ukraine: Economics and Corruption Complicate Its War,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette calls Ukraine a “questionable partner” because of “resistance to economic reform and use of Islamist Chechen forces.” Too bad neither charge is true.