*To read Part One, please click here. Most of the “old” Europe—pre-1999 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union—does not acknowledge the wider implications of Russia’s war in Ukraine (let alone the fact that it is a war). That group... MORE

Russia’s war against Ukraine has exposed the deepening cracks in Europe’s understanding of itself as the West’s core, and in its positioning vis-à-vis an openly adverse Russia. Fragmentation processes were ongoing in Europe prior to this war, both above and (with longer-term effects) below the... MORE

Now that Vladimir Putin has admitted that he seized Crimea by force rather than annexed it to Russia following the free expression of the will of its population (Euromaidan Press, March 10), it is possible that more people will focus not only on that violation... MORE

On March 6, the car of the commander of the Ukrainian special police battalion “Slobozhanshchyna,” Andriy Yanholenko, exploded in the government-controlled eastern city of Kharkiv. The commander and his spouse were inside the car at the time of the explosion and both were hospitalized. Yanholenko... MORE

The photograph that hit millions of computer and smartphone screens late Friday (February 27) night, Moscow time, has instantly become a clear-focused image of what Russia has become amidst the Ukraine war: The night-time photograph in question shows a joyfully decorated bridge leading to the... MORE

The war in Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk did not stop when 2014 came to a close. Therefore, the $27 billion two-year assistance package, promised to Ukraine by the West last May, has turned out to be insufficient to keep the country afloat.... MORE

The foreign affairs ministers of Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine—the “Normandy Four” countries—met on February 24, in Paris, to review the situation in Ukraine’s east. Russian and proxy forces had captured Ukraine’s Debaltseve area on February 18, breaching the armistice signed at the “Normandy Four”... MORE

As the Ukraine crisis deepens and European countries increasingly worry about the possibility of an all-out confrontation with Russia, the Kremlin has begun to make public the basic conditions of an overall political solution that could stabilize and deescalate the standoff. This week (February 25),... MORE

The political and military terms of the Minsk Two agreement (February 12) and capture of Debaltseve by Russia’s proxies breaching the ceasefire (February 18) show the extent of Ukraine’s entrapment into Russia’s conflict stratagems. Russia has set those traps; the existing international system shows no... MORE

In the aftermath of concluding the Minsk Two agreements earlier this month, the strategically important Debaltseve soon fell to the Russia-backed Ukrainian separatists—amidst clear disagreement over whether or not the latest ceasefire applied to the town. During the sixteen-hour talks in Minsk, on February 12,... MORE