With less than one month until Ukraine’s Russian gas-supply agreement ends, critically low stocks of gas in Ukraine could threaten Europe’s security of supply.
Read more
The Ukrainian–Russian conflict has security implications for global maritime traffic in the Baltic–Black Sea region. According to an expert on flows security at the University of Tallinn and the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Professor Mika Aaltola, “these flows are the main arteries of hierarchical global economic interdependence”.1 A direct impact of the conflict is potentially disruptive. Even if its immediate effects cannot be observed, it influences the expectations and future behaviour of regional security and economic actors—governments, people and businesses in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea littoral states first and foremost—by magnifying the political risk.
Read more
The Russian government recently sent the draft Estonian-Russian border treaty to President Vladimir Putin, who is to submit it to the parliament for ratification. The timing of this long-awaited step is probably no coincidence. How so?
Read more
On 8 March 2014, Research Fellow Maksym Bugriy delivered a guest lecture on the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict: Elements and Outlook before the annual Winter Camp meeting of the Estonian Reserve Officers Association (EROK) at the Estonian National Defence College in Tartu.
Read more
The gangland-style murder of Boris Nemtsov late on February 27 marks a second death that occurred long ago but is too difficult for many in the West to accept: the passing of a Russia many had hoped for but which never emerged.
Read more
Moldova has a new government, the Alliance for a European Moldova (AEM), since February 28, after elections and an agitated interregnum. It is a minority coalition and, moreover, an internally divided one, requiring cooperation with the Communist Party’s “constructive opposition”.
Read more
In theory, the West should be able to defeat Russia decisively in the so-called information war regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and before that, of Georgia. In practice, however, the West has decided not to fight at all.
Read more
Matthew Bryza is on the program with Ian Kearns, whose institute just completed a study on decreasing defence spending by the UK, Germany, and several other NATO member states in contradiction of their pledges at NATO’s Wales Summit.
Read more
In mid-January, Russian president Vladimir Putin sent a letter to his Ukrainian counterpart Mr Petro Poroshenko suggesting a plan for the withdrawal of heavy armaments from the line of contact between Ukrainian and so-called separatist forces in the Donbas region, as well as other key issues of the Minsk agreement concluded in September 2014. Consequently, a series of shuttle diplomacy contacts and meetings were initiated by German chancellor Mrs Angela Merkel and French president of France Mr François Hollande that culminated in a new agreement („implementation measures“), let’s call it Minsk II, in the early morning of the 12th of February.
Read more
On February 18–19, Ukraine decided to request the United Nations Security Council to authorize a peacekeeping contingent or police mission that would discourage further advances of Russian and proxy forces in Ukraine’s east (Ukrinform, February 18, 19). Debaltseve fell to Russian and proxy forces on February 18. Ukraine’s appeal, however, shattered on several obstacles, including the UN Security Council’s freshly adopted February 17 resolution. The resolution enshrines and legitimizes Russia’s gains at Ukraine’s expense in the Minsk agreements.
Read more