Black Sea Region

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The EU’s Dilemmas in the Black Sea Region: Security and Enlargement

The Black Sea region has gained renewed strategic importance for the European Union following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As an area of considerable economic and geopolitical significance, as well as a focal point for potential future EU enlargement, its stability is now an urgent concern for European policymakers. Russia’s sustained efforts to undermine security in the Black Sea necessitate a coherent EU vision, moving beyond the fragmented scope of earlier initiatives such as the Black Sea Synergy and aspects of the Eastern Partnership.

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Why Russia Went to War: A Three-Dimensional Perspective

Since Ukraine’s independence became a recognised fact in 1991, the spectre of war with Russia has arisen on several occasions, only to subside. To many outsiders, the war of 2014 was a ‘hybrid war’ launched by ‘separatists backed by Russia’, rather than a fully-fledged war, and the ‘Minsk process’ was defusing it. Until the United States presented details of Russian war plans at the end of 2021, very few observers expected Russia to transgress the bounds of coercive intimidation in its dealings with Ukraine. Once war broke out in February 2022, the pervasive question was ‘why?’

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10 Briefs on Russia’s War in Ukraine

Russia’s war in Ukraine has undoubtedly been game-changing for Europe’s security, challenging the long-held beliefs and assumptions of many Western nations and prompting dramatic shifts in policy, for example, in Germany, Finland, and Sweden. The war’s conduct has also produced significant surprises, not least the unexpectedly poor performance of Russia’s supposedly reformed military.

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Reuters/Scanpix

NATO, Russia, and the Security Dynamics in the Black Sea

In the last decade, the Black Sea has become a de facto arena for competing and objectively irreconcilable strategic interests, where an opportunistic Russia has unilaterally changed the security architecture and dynamics in the region via not only conventional military means, but also highly sophisticated and hybrid means that have allowed Moscow plausible deniability.

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Dmitri Teperik on security expert forum in Odessa

ICDS Chief Executive Dmitri Teperik participated in the annual expert and analyst forum entitled “Modern Wars and Old Conflicts of the Black Sea Region”, which was organised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Maidan of Foreign Affairs and Institute of Strategic Black Sea Studies in Odessa on 6-7 September 2018.

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