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Russia and Ukraine: A Legal Perspective
The following is an interview with Thomas D. Grant, senior research fellow of Wolfson College and senior associate of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, both at the University of...
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Putin Destroys Tons of Food Imports. What's Next?
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s wanton destruction of hundreds of tons of Western food products has provoked a storm of criticism.The outrage is justified, but, no less important, his bizarre...
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Anti-Donbas Sentiment Growing in Ukraine
Is Ukrainian public opinion turning toward getting rid of the Russian-occupied Donbas enclave?The evidence is beginning to look persuasive. A year ago, the suggestion that Ukraine would be better off...
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Back in the USSR
By now you know that a Russian military kangaroo court sentenced Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov and Ukrainian civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko to, respectively, 20 and 10 years imprisonment on...
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Ukraine’s Complicated History
The following is an interview with George Liber, a professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.***MOTYL: Your forthcoming book, Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine,...
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Ukrainians Impatient With Pace of Reforms
Ukrainians are angry. The standard refrains are that there are no reforms and that Ukraine is worse off than it used to be.Such deep-seated anger was at the root of the violent demonstration at the...
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The Fool, Russia, and Ukraine
With The Fool (Durak), 34-year-old Russian film director Yuri Bykov has officially become his country’s Cassandra.The New York Timessays the film is about corruption in a squalid Russia. Bykov’s 2014...
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Putin’s Misguided Move in Syria
Russia’s incompetent bully of a leader, Vladimir Putin, has just committed his latest blunder. He’s decided to prop up the dying Assad regime with weapons and soldiers. Good luck! The USSR’s fiasco in...
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At the UN, Poroshenko 1, Putin 0
Not that speeches delivered at the United Nations General Assembly matter, but, if they did, Vladimir Putin’s would have garnered him a failing grade, while Petro Poroshenko’s would have been in the A...
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A Cautionary Note: Reintegrating the Donbas
The fighting in the Donbas may be winding down, but Ukraine’s war with Russia will continue as long as Vladimir Putin believes that Ukraine must become his subject.Now more than ever Ukraine’s survival...
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Morality, Pragmatism, and Orwell in Rhetoric and Policy
We’ve all gotten very familiar with Vladimir Putin’s Orwellian logic, according to which peace is war, intervention is non-intervention, democracy is fascism, and fascism is democracy. His latest...
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Promising Structural Change Begins to Show in Ukraine
The seemingly unchanging nature of Ukraine’s dysfunctional politics can easily mask the reality: Ukraine itself is changing. Three sets of data illustrate the point.The Ukrainian Week recently...
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A Frenchman Comes to Ukraine
Meet one of Ukraine’s most determined pro-Western politicians and Ukrainian patriots. He’s the mayor of Hlukhiv, a small city located northeast of Kyiv, in Sumy Province, just a few miles from the...
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Interpreting Gorbachev's Very Mixed Signals
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s response to Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter plane on November 24th nicely reveals the contradictions on which so much of contemporary Russian political...
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Putin vs. ISIS: Which Threatens the West More?
President Vladimir Putin’s December 3rd address to the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s national legislature, was an exercise in chutzpah, trying to present Russia as a victim of...
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Russian Expansionism, Compatriots, and Energy Transformation
The following is an interview with Agnia Grigas, an expert on energy and political risk in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the post-Soviet region.* * *MOTYL: Your forthcoming book, Beyond Crimea: The New...
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The Winners and Losers of ‘Nation-Branding’
The following is an interview with Robert Saunders, a professor in the Department of History, Politics, and Geography at Farmingdale State College–SUNY and an expert on “nation-branding.”* * *MOTYL:...
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Putin is Steering Russia to Collapse
As the new year begins, both Ukraine and Russia are making steady progress. The difference is that, while Ukraine is slowly, and more or less surely, adopting a raft of systemic reforms that will make...
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The 2016 Santa-Putin Letters
These top-secret letters were brought to my attention by my deep-throat contact in the Kremlin. They appeared just after the Orthodox Christmas on January 7.To: V. PutinFrom: S. ClausYou’ve been...
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The Negativists are Wrong on Ukraine
It was at the California Republican state convention in San Diego on September 11, 1970 that Vice President Spiro Agnew immortalized his speech writer, William Safire, by saying the following memorable...
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