War in Ukraine

Ukraine Needs Tough Love and IMF Conditionality, Leshchenko Urges

By Diane Francis

“The IMF should not give one more dollar to Ukraine until the Anti-Corruption Court is in operation,” said Sergii Leshchenko in a May 9 telephone interview. Leshchenko is a hero of the Revolution of Dignity, a lanky and serious journalist-turned-politician who has risked his life and career for years to fight corruption in Ukraine. He’s […]

Russia Deploys Banned Missile and Brags about It

By Semen Kabakaev

Thirty years ago, on December 8, 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which entered into force on June 1, 1988. The parties pledged not to produce, test or deploy ballistic and cruise land-based missiles of medium range (from 1,000 to 5,500 kilometers). Elimination of all declared missiles and […]

How Trump Can Fix US-Russia Ties

By Alexander Vershbow

US President Donald Trump will have his first high-level meeting with a Russian representative this week, when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov comes to the White House following a scheduled meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The stakes are high: about the only thing on which Moscow and Washington agree is that relations are at […]

Russia’s De-Escalation Zone Plan for Syria is Doomed

The proposal for de-escalation zones in Syria, which will enter into force at midnight on May 5, is unlikely to be effective in the long term, according to an Atlantic Council analyst. “Maybe” the agreement will temporarily have a demonstrable effect on lowering the number of civilian deaths in Syria, said Faysal Itani, a senior […]

Germany Wants to Destroy Foreign Servers Carrying Out Cyber Attacks

By Andrea Shalal, Reuters

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency accused Russian rivals of gathering large amounts of political data in cyber attacks

How Not to Become a War Criminal: A Guide for Russian Soldiers

By Valentyn Badrak, Lada Roslycky, Mykhailo Samus, and Volodymyr Kopchak

Few Russian citizens view the Kremlin’s invasion into Ukraine as unlawful. Not many Russian servicemen realize that when they are fighting there, they fight as unnamed, faceless soldiers who lack the protection of international pacts, including the Geneva Conventions. They not only risk death, injury, or abandonment by the state that sent them there; they […]

Do Bulgaria’s Historical Russian Ties Spell Trouble for NATO and the Black Sea Region?

By Adam Maisel and Will DuVal, Modern War Institute

The November election of Rumen Radev as president of Bulgaria has contributed to growing concerns that several former Soviet satellite states are drifting back into the orbit of Putin’s Russia.