... more than a generation ago by the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) now faces one of the greatest tests of its relevancy and effectiveness since it was created as it searches for a resolution to the Ukrainian crisis. All this as the OSCE prepares to commemorate its 40
th
anniversary in 2015.
To discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the OSCE and the world in the new post-Cold War era, Russia Direct sat down with Andrey Kortunov, General ...
The Ukrainian crisis, when analyzed in terms of timing and breadth, could not but exert a significant influence on the socio-political landscape of the post-Soviet space. Moreover, the crisis seems to have put an end to the concept of the “post-Soviet ...
The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) is proud to present its new book entitled “The Ukrainian Crisis through the Prism of International Relations”.
The publication includes articles written by the President of the Russian International Affairs Council and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (1998–2004) ...
... interested in minimising risks and damage, and even more in preventing an escalation of the Transdniestrian conflict, they must start shaping some kind of common “Moldovan-Transdniestrian” agenda.
The process and scope of any agreement
The Ukrainian crisis thus clearly demonstrates that
the basic interest
is in agreeing on how to maintain internal stability and prevent an escalation of the conflict on the Dniester. Radical (revolutionary) solutions from the Russian side appear to have ...
... British-Russian scandal in 2006, helped put an end to the small Cold War and facilitated the resumption of bilateral dialogue. The steady but politically difficult rapprochement between the two countries in 2010-2013 was unexpectedly interrupted by the Ukrainian crisis of 2014. The difference in perception of both what caused the crisis and how it can be resolved has not just set the two countries at loggerheads, but could even trigger an armed confrontation between them.
Global economic crisis and ...
Fyodor Lukyanov on how the war in Ukraine changed life in Russia but not in the world.
Had the decisive Minsk talks taken place a week later, everything could have wrapped up in style. It would have been exactly twelve months since it all began on February 20, 2014, when the Maidan protest movement culminated in the overthrow of the government in Kiev. What came out of the talks was the end of hostilities almost a year later and an accounting of the results of the revolution in a grand international...
After the ceasefire negotiated in Minsk, a peace settlement in eastern Ukraine remains distant. Most of the points in the agreement, including Ukraine’s constitutional reform and the resumption of Kiev’s control over the entire Ukrainian-Russian border, will probably never be implemented. The most one can hope for is that the conflict is frozen and people stop dying. Even that, however, cannot be taken for granted, as continued fighting ahead of the ceasefire’s formal entry into...
The new Minsk agreement is mainly a product of Europe’s fear of war and Ukraine’s rapidly deteriorating military, economic and political condition. The Germans and the French were jolted into action by the prospect of the United States arming Kiev, provoking Moscow to rise to a new level of confrontation. Ukraine’s leadership had to choose between the Scylla of making a bad peace and the Charybdis of continuing a losing war. As for the Russians, freezing the conflict along the lines...
Shuttle diplomacy exercised by European leaders gives us a phantom of a chance that we must not overlook
The first impression from the Munich conference is that relations between Russia and the West are beginning to resemble a game of chicken. It is as if two airplanes are rushing towards each other head-on, and both crews refuse to deviate from their planned route. The only way for one side to win is for his opponent to lose. It is a virtually impossible task to make concessions or for both opponents...
... perceived by Moscow as an indicator of the weakness of the West and a sign for attack. The formula that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO” no longer reflects s political and diplomatic compromise with Moscow, which has been revoked by the Ukrainian crisis and the acute Russian-Western conflict. The emphasis in this formula has been put on the word “will”, while the implied “someday” has been replaced by the newly relevant “how and when.”
REUTERS/Gleb ...
