Ukraine At War

Ukraine Liveblog Day 102: Has the Vostok Battalion Taken Charge in Donetsk?

May 30, 2014

Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable information service by making a donation towards our costs. An interactive map of the situation: View Ukraine: April, 2014 in a larger map For links to individual […]

Russia’s Wins and Losses in Ukrainian Crisis Up to Now Compared

May 29, 2014

Staunton, May 28 – In what he describes as an act of “political bookkeeping,” Andrey Lipsky, the deputy chief editor of Novaya Gazeta describes what Russia has gained and what it has lost so far as a result of the Ukrainian crisis, thus providing a useful checklist of the balance now and its likely direction […]

Ukraine Liveblog Day 101: Helicopter Shot Down Over Slavyansk

Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable information service by making a donation towards our costs. An interactive map of the situation: View Ukraine: April, 2014 in a larger map For links to individual […]

‘Donetsk Disease’ Spreads to Abkhazia

May 28, 2014

Staunton, May 28 – In what the Kremlin is likely to see as the most disturbing blowback of its backing of the Donetsk separatists in Ukraine, a group of veterans of the Georgian-Abkhaz war have stormed a government building in Sukhumi and demanded the resignation of that breakaway republic’s president, an indication of how easily […]

Sanctions Won’t Change Putin, But May Change His Elites’ Support

The evidence that sanctions change a state’s policies is slim. Actually it’s very slim. Economic sanctions taken by themselves have rarely produced the outcomes with which they were designed to produce. The main reason is that the global economy is so diverse, so spread out, that it is almost impossible to create an overarching and […]

Ukraine Liveblog Day 100: The Battle For Donetsk Continues

There have been reports of gunfire in Donetsk this morning on the third day of a renewed government effort to push back separatist fighters from the region. Barricades are still up along roads to the airport (scene of intense fighting on Monday as the Ukrainian army and air force retook the site, inflicting heavy casualties […]

Kremlin Transforming Political Opponents into Soviet-Style Dissidents

May 27, 2014

Staunton, May 27 – In yet another example of Vladimir Putin’s restoration of some of the ugliest features of the Soviet past, his government has “politicized any public criticism and marginalized any who disagree,” thus ensuring that opponents of the Kremlin have no possibility of winning elections and transforming them into Soviet-era-style dissidents. That is […]

Anti-Semitism Less a Threat in Ukraine than in Russia, Verkhovsky Says

Staunton, May 27 – It would be “strange” if there weren’t any anti-Semites among groups fighting in Ukraine, Aleksandr Verkhovsky says, but he adds that “happily we have not observed any particular growth of anti-Semitism” there despite Moscow’s claims to the contrary. In the Russian Federation, on the other hand, the trend is different and […]

Putin Suffers ‘Crushing Defeat’ in Ukrainian Elections, Illarionov Says

Staunton, May 26 – The “most significant result” of the Ukrainian presidential elections was not the selection of Petro Poroshenko, his victory in the first round, or the defeat of Yuliya Tymoshenko but rather “the formal-legal death of the Putin myth about the so-called ‘split’ of Ukraine into a West-Central and South-Eastern part,” Andrey Illarionov […]

Has Putin Really Lost ‘the Shortest Cold War in History’?

Staunton, May 26 – Vladimir Putin “has lost the shortest cold war in history,” Yevgeny Ikhlov says. After having seized Crimea for Russia 12 weeks ago and effectively challenged the West to a contest, the Kremlin leader has backed away from his larger plan to counterpose a “Russian world” to everyone else. In a commentary […]