The Russian invasion of Ukraine February 24 2022 marks the start of a new displacement crisis. In a statement on February 24, Filippo Grandi, the High Commissioner for Refugees, emphasized that ‘The humanitarian consequences on civilian populations will be devastating. There are no winners in war, but countless lives will be torn apart. We have… Read more »
Tag: Ukraine
India on Russia-Ukraine: History, Pragmatism and the Dilemmas Therein
India’s decision to consistently remain ‘neutral’ when voting on resolutions on the Ukraine crisis in multilateral fora might not come as a surprise to those who follow Indian foreign policy closely and know its history. India’s decision to abstain from voting in each and every multilateral fora has, nonetheless, raised eyebrows among security analysts who… Read more »
Turkey’s Difficult Balancing Act in the Ukraine Crisis
It’s not difficult to imagine Turkey’s President Erdogan watching Putin’s failures in Ukraine with a solid dose of schadenfreude. Putin has been the kingmaker in Syria since 2015 and Erdogan, not one for compromise, has had to negotiate with Putin to secure Turkey’s interests. The most critical of these has been Turkey’s opposition to Kurdish… Read more »
Russia Has Violated the Fundamental Rules of International Law. What Are the Consequences?
Vladimir Putin’s speech on 24 February was not only a formal announcement of his invasion of Ukraine, but also a defence of this use of force under international law. The fact that Russia is relying on international law is no surprise – Russia has always done so. The question is whether its arguments have any… Read more »
People on the Move in the Face of War in Ukraine
More than half a million people have fled the Russian invasion of Ukraine through the country’s borders to neighbours in Central and Eastern Europe as of 1 March. In a context of war in Europe, and the human suffering it brings, this blog post offers some rough reflections on mobility and inequality, but also solidarity.
Hungarian Perspectives on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
‘Russians go home!’ (Ruszkik haza!), one of the many slogans of the 1956 revolution against the Soviet occupation, is a familiar term for every Hungarian. 66 years later, the same sentence was chanted by crowds gathered in front of the Russian Embassy in Hungary to oppose President Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. The 1956 Hungarian… Read more »
Putin’s War Is Stuck, Beware the Rising Risks
Data on the concentration of Russian troops was solid; the diplomatic offensive executed by Moscow was deliberately disagreeable; yet, many experts (myself including) refused to accept the proposition on the coming war as “inevitable”. Denials streaming from the Kremlin were never convincing, but President Vladimir Putin’s reputation as a shrewd pragmatist still clashed with the… Read more »
We Shouldn’t Be Surprised by Putin’s Invasion
The wheel of history is now in motion. Russia’s gruesome attack on Ukraine disrupts one of the most significant trends in the history of nation states, namely the astounding absence of large-scale wars of invasion and occupation in Europe since the end of World War II. For many years, peace researchers have pointed out that… Read more »
What Do People in Ukraine Want?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 — a drastic escalation of an already devastating armed conflict ongoing since 2014 — violates the right of the people of Ukraine to live their lives in a sovereign state and independently shape their future. While much focus has been on the geopolitics of this conflict,… Read more »
No Way around a Dangerous Confrontation with Putin’s Russia
I, along with many other commentators, believed until the very end that war in Ukraine was preventable and would ultimately not take place. Very sadly, and concerningly, I was wrong. Why did I hold out hope so long for the avoidance of war? What does the invasion of Ukraine tell us about Putin’s regime? And… Read more »