The battle for reform in Kyiv

Ukraine’s reformist government is achieving results. But vested interests are blocking many key reforms, and corruption remains a major problem. Mikheil Saakashvili, the controversial governor of Odessa, is dividing the reformers in Kyiv, as I discovered on my recent visit.

Ukraine’s pro-EU, pro-reform coalition has made real progress since taking office nearly a year ago. The current lull in fighting in the Donbass makes it easier for the government to work on reform. So does slightly better economic news: the government has struck a deal with its creditors to reschedule debt, while the economy may soon stop shrinking.

EU May Take Desperate Measures To Ensure Energy Security

Oft forgotten and on the periphery of the European Union, the Balkans plus Ukraine may have a plan to address the energy needs of the economic bloc. It’s coal-heavy, borderline uneconomic, and arguably counterproductive to respective national agendas, but it does aim to satisfy some particularly topical pan-European goals: greater interconnection and greater energy security, i.e. reduced dependence on Russia.

Two cheers for Ukraine

Despite recent progress, Ukraine remains militarily, politically and economically fragile. The EU needs to do more to help.



There are plenty of reasons for those in Kyiv to be optimistic. The government, more competent and less corrupt than any since independence in 1991, is undertaking serious reform. But Ukraine’s success is far from assured: the political class is fractious, Russia may be preparing for more fighting in the Donbass and the economy is shrinking. Without sustained Western attention, the country’s attempt to become a Western-orientated democracy may once again fail, as happened after the ‘orange revolution’ of 2004.

Top U.S. General in Europe: Arming Ukraine ‘Isn’t a Strategy’

The top U.S. Army commander in Europe questioned whether Washington should provide weaponry to Ukraine to help in its fight against Russian-backed separatists, a proposal gaining increasing support among American officials alarmed by the rebels’ ongoing gains in eastern Ukraine.

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges conceded to reporters Tuesday that arming Ukraine could help its fragile pro-Western government on the battlefield, at least in the short term. But he said that wouldn’t be enough to fundamentally ensure that Ukraine doesn’t lose more territory to Russia in the wake of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea last year.

France, Germany make last-ditch peace effort as U.S. weighs arming Ukraine

The leaders of Germany and France on Thursday announced a surprise diplomatic bid to end the conflict in Ukraine, working to forestall White House deliberations about arming government forces amid fears that the war could quickly spiral out of control.

The new peace effort came as civilian and military casualties have mounted by the hundreds in recent weeks. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande said they would fly to Moscow on Friday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to strike a deal. The unusual journey underscored the high stakes in the effort to quell the bloodiest European conflict since the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The Other War in Ukraine

What’s the best way to save Ukraine? “By reforming the country,” says Sergii Leshchenko, a freshman member of the Ukrainian parliament. The war against Russian aggression isn’t the only front in his country’s struggle for survival right now. Leshchenko says that he’s even more worried about the fight against Ukraine’s long-established culture of sleaze — a disease that has crippled governance and stunted development.

Ukraine after the elections: Democracy and the barrel of a gun

Ukraine has lost control of parts of its industrial heartland, as well as Crimea. The question is whether there will now be a government in Kyiv that can make a success of the rest of the country. There are reasons for concern.

The good news is that most of Ukraine voted for a new parliament on October 26^th. Pro-European parties backing President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk won a majority of the 423 seats contested (which excluded occupied areas). More than 900 international observers monitored voting; they described it as "an amply contested election that offered voters real choice". The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said grudgingly that the elections seemed to be valid, though not in every part of Ukraine.

Will Ukraine Commit Economic Suicide?

Ukraine is on the brink of committing economic suicide after imposing a crippling 55 percent tax on private gas producers, while parliament prepares to vote on next year’s budget, which aims for a continuation of the same.

The Oct. 14 budget vote—which is already a month late—is a major condition for Ukraine’s next credit tranche from the European Union, but if the 2015 budget goes through as proposed, it will decimate independent gas production, remove any potential for Ukrainian energy independence and deal a further blow to the already struggling economy.

 Robert Bensh, Ukrainian energy security expert

Ukraine, Iraq and a Black Sea Strategy

The United States is, at the moment, off balance. It faces challenges in the Syria-Iraq theater as well as challenges in Ukraine. It does not have a clear response to either. It does not know what success in either theater would look like, what resources it is prepared to devote to either, nor whether the consequences of defeat would be manageable. 

A dilemma of this sort is not unusual for a global power. Its very breadth of interests and the extent of power create opportunities for unexpected events, and these events, particularly simultaneous challenges in different areas, create uncertainty and confusion. U.S. geography and power permit a degree of uncertainty without leading to disaster, but generating a coherent and integrated strategy is necessary, even if that strategy is simply to walk away and let events run their course. I am not suggesting the latter strategy but arguing that at a certain point, confusion must run its course and clear intentions must emerge. When they do, the result will be the coherence of a new strategic map that encompasses both conflicts. 

The Inevitability of Foreign Entanglements

The Fourth of July weekend gave me time to consider events in Iraq and Ukraine, U.S.-German relations and the Mexican borderland and immigration. I did so in the context of the founding of the United States, asking myself if America has strayed from the founders' intent with regard to foreign policy. Many people note Thomas Jefferson's warning that the United States should pursue "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none," taking that as the defining strategy of the founders. I think it is better to say that was the defining wish of the founders but not one that they practiced to extremes.

As we know, U.S. President Barack Obama has said he wants to decrease U.S. entanglements in the world. Ironically, many on the right want to do the same. There is a common longing for an America that takes advantage of its distance from the rest of the world to avoid excessive involvement in the outside world. Whether Jefferson's wish can constitute a strategy for the United States today is a worthy question for a July 4, but there is a more profound issue: Did his wish ever constitute American strategy?

Ukraine's Government Tries to Retake Control in the East

A pro-Russian militant guards a state building seized in Donetsk, Ukraine.(VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images)

Kiev and Moscow are escalating their battle for control of eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian government announced June 3 that it would launch the next stage of a campaign to win back control of the country's east from militant separatists. At the same time, Russian-backed groups are working to consolidate control over those same separatists as a way to put more pressure on Kiev to compromise. Both sides believe eastern Ukraine is critical for determining the country's future orientation and territorial unity, and Russia will use all the leverage it can find to pressure Kiev into accepting its conditions for a stand-down.

Devolution in Ukraine: Panacea or Pandora's Box?

Russia and the West do not agree on much about Ukraine, but both say that state power there has been too centralised. They are right that people in Ukraine’s regions do not feel that the authorities speak for them; but the real cause is ineffective and corrupt government at all levels, not an over-mighty central government. Both Russian and Western prescriptions for redistributing powers could make things worse if the underlying issues are not addressed first.



 For Russia, the buzzword is ‘federalisation’ – a radical reallocation of powers so that the oblasts (regions) in southern and eastern Ukraine could have their own foreign and trade policies. According to Sergei Glazyev, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s adviser on Eurasian integration, this could include the right to join the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union. Ukraine’s interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has called this “feudalisation”, designed to make Ukraine subordinate to Russia. It would certainly be impossible for Ukraine to implement a free trade agreement with the EU if part of the country was in a customs union with Russia. 

Ukraine, short on military budget, starts fundraising drive

Ukraine’s new government inherited an army so bereft of modern equipment and training that when Russian troops entered Crimea and agitators stormed government offices in eastern Ukraine, the country proved helpless to protect its borders and citizens.

View Photo Gallery — Pro-Russian militants refuse to leave Ukrainian government buildings: Pro-Russian­ militants, boasting that they do not take orders from diplomats in Washington or Moscow, refused to end their armed occupation of a dozen government buildings across eastern Ukraine on Friday, upending hopes for a quick end to the standoff.

The corruption that had darkened all the nation’s institutions had provoked demonstrators to stand their ground in Kiev until the old leaders fled. But the depth of the damage took the country by surprise when the Crimean Peninsula was easily lost to Russian annexation last month, revealing a military profoundly weakened by theft and neglect.

Russia’s Devious Plan For Eastern Ukraine Is Working

Gleb Garanich

Pro-Russian armed men stand guard in Slaviansk, Ukraine.

As western Ukrainian security forces reportedly seek to dislodge ethnic Russian paramilitaries from government buildings in Slaviansk (although that’s now being questioned) and anti-Kyiv forces muster in other eastern Ukrainian cities, allegations are flying thick and fast about the presence of Russian troops in these disturbances. (I should mention that The Interpreter‘s liveblog is an invaluable service in keeping track of all the claims, counterclaims and reports on the ground.)

Seriously, What Did You Expect Russia to Do?

• BY Edward Lozansky

Any nation's foreign policy, including those of the most liberal and democratic states, rests on the frankly cynical what's-good-for-us-is-supremely-just principle, and those who don't like it can jolly well lump it. Taken a bit further, this philosophy can be extended to include the biblical wisdom of "he that is not with us is against us." 

Ukraine crisis: How Vladimir Putin is winning the psychological war

As it emerges that the promised partial withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukrainian border has not taken place, Western powers are reduced to awaiting Moscow's next move.

Vladimir Putin's behaviour over Ukraine offers a masterclass in how to conduct psychological warfare Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/ Getty

By David Blair

More than a century ago, Lenin told his fellow revolutionaries that demoralising the enemy by “issuing the first agitational leaflet” amounted to waging war by other means. 

Russia and the United States Negotiate the Future of Ukraine

During the Cold War, U.S. secretaries of state and Soviet foreign ministers routinely negotiated the outcome of crises and the fate of countries. It has been a long time since such talks have occurred, but last week a feeling of deja vu overcame me. Americans and Russians negotiated over everyone's head to find a way to defuse the crisis in Ukraine and, in the course of that, shape its fate.

During the talks, U.S. President Barack Obama made it clear that Washington has no intention of expanding NATO into either Ukraine or Georgia. The Russians have stated that they have no intention of any further military operations in Ukraine. Conversations between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry have been extensive and ongoing. For different reasons, neither side wants the crisis to continue, and each has a different read on the situation.

Forget the drama: A solution for Crimea

By Anatole Kaletsky

President Vladimir Putin has disastrously miscalculated and Russia now faces deeper isolation, tougher sanctions and greater economic hardship than at any time since the Cold War. So declared President Obama after the NATO summit in Brussels.

Russia seizes 51 Ukrainian ships in Crimea

In its invasion and annexation of Crimea, Russia has seized 51 vessels belonging to the Ukrainian navy, according to information compiled by Dmitry Tymchuk, director of the Center of Military and Political Research in Kyiv.

Among the Ukrainian vessels reportedly captured by the Russians are submarine Zaporizhia, management ship Slavutych, landing ship Konstantin Olshansky, landing ship Kirovohrad, minesweeper Chernihiv and minesweeper Cherkasy.

Showdown in Ukraine: Putin’s Quest for Ports, Oil, Pipelines and Gas

Yes, Russia is guilty of meddling in Ukraine, but then again so are the United States and the European Union. The major difference is that far less was said and much less reported by the international media over the Americans’ and Europeans’ interference than of Russia’s actions and the reactions it caused.

Where Russia is involved many in the West believe that one only needs to scratch the surface to see traces of the old Soviet Union begin to resurface. After all, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a former KGB officer. The truth is much more complicated than that: or perhaps somewhat simpler.