Ukraine: Articles

Getting an EU perspective and a candidate status took Ukraine through a long, complex, and controversial integration path, according to the paper. To get a better insight of how the EU’s perception of Ukraine has developed over time, this paper aims to shed light on key turning moments and political developments in Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine represented a major geopolitical shock for the EU. In the face of an illegal Russian aggression, EU institutions and member states rallied to support Ukraine. Nevertheless, the war in Ukraine also exposed the limited fiscal capacity of the EU. As a result, EU institutions and member states had to come up with creative ways to financially back Ukraine’s military and civilian efforts. This article examines the two key tools deployed by the EU so far to fund Ukraine in its war against Russia, namely the European Peace Facility and the Macro-Financial Assistance Instrument.

Has the world now been forced to accept that interstate war is no longer a phenomenon of the past? Have the EU’s relations—and hopes for partnership—with Russia irrevocably ended? Has a new eastern-leaning centre of gravity been established within the EU? How has the war affected the nature and trajectory of transatlantic security relations? How might the EU conceptualise and deliver on its new requirements in the field of military capacity? What are the prospects for a peace settlement and a new Eurasian security order? These profound questions require a major aggiornamento in the EU’s approach to security and defence policy.

Given its depth and ambition, the Association Agreement (AA) concluded between the EU and Ukraine may have been expected to result in significant reverse influence on the EU. However, this article shows that this influence is indirect, arising from mechanisms and international processes brought into sharp relief by the AA. These are: the power asymmetry between the parties, politicization of the agreement and geo‐politicization as a form of contestation of the agreement in the geopolitical arena, stirred by Russia's grievances.

Hardly anyone would disagree that the aggressor should pay for the damage it has done to Ukraine and its economy. However, how to turn this idea into practice? In this article we discuss the methods to evaluate damage to human health, culture and nature.

This article provides insights on the war being waged through the Ukrainian information environment as well as take away lessons for the United States and its allies for the future.

Following the Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv’s Government received unprecedented military support from NATO members. The military cooperation between Ukraine and the Atlantic Alliance goes back to the early nineties, and it underwent an intensification process after the Crimea in 2014. The Western support during the 2022 conflict took the form of economic assistance, weapons supply, and training of troops. Despite NATO’s military aid certainly played a role in Ukraine being able to resist Moscow’s aggression, problems on and off the battlefield raised concerns about the Alliance’s interoperability capacity, not only with respect to its partners but also between its Member States. Therefore, NATO Chiefs of Staff need to identify and address these issues to steer the conflict.

Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has been under an EU sanctions regime. While these sanctions have not prevented Putin from ordering an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, in the overall picture, they have significantly weakened Russia’s ability to wage war. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the sanctions and argues that the EU should maintain and tighten sanctions, thus further weakening the military and economic power of the Putin regime.

In June 2022, the European Union granted candidate status to Ukraine. A strong political statement, which was welcomed as such in Kyiv. But for a country at war, symbols do not suffice. Accepting a neighbour that is under invasion as a candidate for membership must mean accepting more responsibility for that neighbour’s survival. Ukraine was a buffer state; it has become a frontier state. The EU should finally come up with an overall plan to provide military support to Ukraine over the long term, gradually taking over the main effort from the United States.

Face à l'invasion de l'Ukraine par la Russie, l'Union Européenne a opéré un "réveil géopolitique". Pour accomplir ses objectifs stratégiques, elle doit toutefois continuer à utiliser son savoir-faire et son expertise technique.

Although the war is far from over, at this stage it is already possible to see how the use of open-source intelligence (OSINT), based on commercial capabilities, knowledge-sharing communities on social media, and artificial intelligence tools developed in the private sector have improved the ability of the Ukrainian military to gather intelligence to offset the relative advantage of the Russian military.

The past few weeks have witnessed a frenzy of activity when it comes to arming Ukraine. Much of the media attention has focused on whether Germany would send Leopard 2 tanks to help Kyiv withstand any further onslaught by Russia and perhaps itself go on the offensive when the winter snows melt. The author comments on Germany's stance regarding the delivery of Leopard tanks in response to Ukraine’s request for 300 modern, Western tanks in a short timeframe.

How will Ukraine’s war evolve in 2023, and can it yield a path to peace? Analysts’ scenarios for the war are full of unknowns. This article looks at future scenarios for the war in 2023 and which are the options for peace.

Gas plays a critical role in Ukraine’s energy system and can be a pillar of its post-war economy. The brief summarizes the country's gas resources and analyses how natural gas investment fits with other reconstruction priorities. It also examines the importance of Ukraine’s gas resources for a lower-carbon Europe.

The report focuses on the important role of private sector investment in Ukraine’s economic reconstruction and in helping Ukraine win the peace and secure membership in the EU.

N’est-il pas temps de mettre un terme à la terrible guerre qui déchire l’Ukraine en entamant le plus rapidement possible des négociations avec le Président russe ? Cette idée, de plus en plus fréquemment avancée à mesure que la guerre se prolonge, servirait-elle vraiment la cause de la paix ? Examen des arguments.

Russia’s cyber operations in Ukraine have apparently not had much military impact. This was probably for a multitude of reasons: Russia’s offensive limitations, as well as the defensive efforts of Ukraine and its partners; the particular context of this war, as well as structural features of cyberspace and warfare generally.

According to the authors, there is growing awareness of the war as their analysis of German, French, Polish, and Latvian perceptions of the Russian war against Ukraine suggest. As such, the war has substantially changed perceptions of conflict and crisis in the surveyed countries, bringing back fears of war and awareness of developments in Ukraine.

European Commission President von der Leyen recently stressed that the EU’s responses to Ukrainian arrivals were not to be considered an exception, but rather to be used as a “blueprint” going forward. This paper asks: How much scope is there for doing so? And what is politically realistic?

Après vingt ans de contre-terrorisme, le champ de bataille ukrainien marque le renouveau de la guerre dite de « haute intensité ». Il constitue un tournant stratégique majeur, renversant le modèle contemporain des guerres impliquant l’Occident.

To prevail in that war, the Russian regime must hope this Ukrainian spring will give way to a Russian winter. It wants to make progress on the ground by slowly capturing more territory. But, according to the authors, even as the EU and its member states push back on all these fronts, they should consider more holistically how they will support Ukraine in the long war.

President Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine will negotiate with Russia when Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian army back to their positions of February 24. The decision on when and how to negotiate rests entirely with Ukraine. The United States and other allies can provide the support Ukrainians need in that process. This commentary briefs what that support would look like.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine will sharpen the divide between democracies and autocracies, but also lead to more realpolitik strategic balancing. A key question is what kind of coordination emerges between democracies.

The authors analyse the impact on energy prices in Europe after the Russian invasion and the Covid-19 pandemic. It gives general recommendations and also shows the importance of a second electricity interconnector between Ireland and France.

According to the author, the simple fact that modern Russia has chosen the path of dictatorship over democracy must shape the West’s response to the ongoing conflict and serve to guarantee maximum EU support for Ukraine’s further integration. Granting Ukraine candidate status is a step in the right direction, but as long as the country is stuck in the geopolitical grey zone, it will remain a target for Russian aggression and a source of international instability.

By granting Ukraine (and the Republic of Moldova) candidate status, the EU-27, shifted the policy gears: from neighbourhood to enlargement. This collective consent has the potential to make the EU stronger. The view of the author is that the outcome depends on the political will of Brussels and the current and potentially new member states.

According to the author, seven weeks of Russian full-scale war against Ukraine proved the vulnerabilities of the regional and global security architecture, inconsistency of the existing international legal mechanisms, and impotence of the UN and the OSCE. Russian invasion has imminent backlashes. Should they not be addressed immediately, they could jeopardize and reverse the progressive achievements of recent decades.

This paper sets out Ukraine’s war and post-war needs, focusing on the immediate demands: military, economic, humanitarian, and political. The purpose is not only to give an overview of the enormity of needs but also to provide ideas on to where international support should be channeled.

In the run-up to the next climate conference scheduled for Egypt this fall, Western leaders would do well to listen more to Africans and take a more nuanced view toward their energy outlook while balancing climate goals. Critically, this could help fill Europe’s energy void and African budget coffers.

While Ukraine was not the first major conflict involving cyber, it was the first involving large-scale cyber operations. This report offers a preliminary review of cyber operations in the Ukraine conflict.

En reconnaissant l’indépendance de deux régions séparatistes, le président Vladimir Poutine a porté atteinte à l’intégrité de l’Ukraine et accéléré la spirale des sanctions occidentales contre la Russie : liste noire de dirigeants, embargos, restrictions financières… Bien que ces mesures soient rarement efficaces, Washington et l’Union européenne en font un usage croissant.

The war in Ukraine has impacted the world economy and affected Ukraine severely, ruining industries as well as causing massive migration, a decrease in household income, and an increase in the budget deficit and government debt. As the war continues, it will deepen the negative effects on the economy.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has provided a brutal reminder to the world - but especially to the West - that hard power matters and that employing military means to alter political realities has not been relegated to a distant past. The author comments that for countries in the Middle East and North Africa, this is something with which they have lived for decades, and their response to the war in Ukraine has generally been to remain neutral and pursue their own interests.

The Russian invasion has brought a lot of geopolitical tensions. This policy brief gives a summary that addresses three issues for the ‘New State of the World’: key characteristics; policy priorities in the near and longer term; and process and governance.

The report argues that Russia’s war on Ukraine puts the entire future European order at risk. It is already forcing a profound reconsideration of the EU’s and its neighbours’ interests. To address this, the report suggests that the EU should establish a Partnership for Enlargement that offers Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Western Balkans states concrete steps towards deeper integration – and a pathway to eventual membership. This new partnership should include three ‘pillars’: single market integration and the reconstruction of Ukraine; a reinforced commitment to energy security and climate transition; and stronger political cooperation in security matters.

After Euromajdan, the feeling of “Ukraine fatigue” slowly creeped across the EU over the years, as the plight of the Ukrainians became increasingly less newsworthy. Today, there is growing risk that a similar fatigue will re-emerge. That cannot happen; that must not be allowed to happen. Not now. Not after the daily sacrifices made by millions of Ukrainians in defense of fundamental European values.

The paper looks at Moscow’s policy towards Kyiv, taking into account recent displays of Russia’s escalating aggressive rhetoric and actions towards Ukraine. As for the strategy, Russia has two options: to escalate the armed conflict in the Donbas in order to achieve a rapid breakthrough, or to intensify long-term pressure, i.e. to play for Kyiv’s gradual exhaustion.

Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine has led to a turning point in Europe’s thinking on security and defence. the EU’s decision to finance the supply of lethal arms and equipment to Ukraine, along with Germany’s and other countries’ announcement to massively increase military spending, marks a remarkable reversal in Europe’s strategic culture.

Paired with an unprecedented assistance package and new forms of sectoral integration in key EU policies (e.g. the twin green and digital transitions), the current EU–Ukraine Association Agreement remains the most appropriate instrument to develop this bilateral relationship further. The dynamic nature of the agreement, combined with its open-ended accession perspective, implies that both the EU and Ukraine can reorient it to new and more ambitious forms of political association and economic integration and accommodate it to a pre-accession context on the basis of a staged approach.

Global food production will be sufficient to feed the global population this year. But export bans, high prices and increasing transport cost might prevent vulnerable countries from procuring sufficient food supplies. Measures to ensure global access to scarcer food supplies and to boost grain production are warranted.

Amonth into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, 3.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country as refugees. A total of 10 million people—1 in 4 Ukrainians—have left their homes, including those who are now internally displaced. This is one of Europe's biggest mass migrations since World War II.

À la veille du cinquième élargissement de l'Union européenne en 2003, la politique de voisinage a été lancée pour "éviter de nouvelles lignes de partage en Europe et promouvoir stabilité et prospérité" et pour créer, selon une formule devenue célèbre, un "cercle d'amis". Le Partenariat oriental, qui en émane le 7 mai 2009, est désormais mis à mal par l'invasion militaire russe de l'Ukraine.

A stop to Russian oil and coal supplies would push Europe into a short and painful adjustment period. But if managed well, disruptions would remain temporary.

The IPCC’s latest warning of the adverse impact of climate change on global security has been largely overshadowed by the Ukraine crisis, explains Shiloh Fetzek. But could the swift energy-policy decisions of the past weeks offer hope of an accelerated shift away from fossil fuels?

The author argues that the Russia-Ukraine war is an opportunity to rebuild the foundation of a new EU and analyses the roles of NATO, US and other players in ending the conflict.

Mr Putin's invasion announcement came shortly after Russia's decision to recognise the rights of the self-declared people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk to areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not under Ukrainian control. Instead of stopping at this infringement of Ukraine's sovereignty, the Russian leader has now embarked on a military invasion to subdue the whole of the country.

Europe has been united in its solidarity with Ukraine. To ensure this continues, the EU needs to support member states through the challenging times ahead and shield them from actors who may wish to sow discord.

Analyzing data from past wars indicates that the window to end the violence and find an offramp from the escalating crisis in Ukraine will shrink after the first 30 days. Washington should complement supporting the Ukrainian people with backchannel diplomacy outlining incentives for Moscow to agree to a ceasefire and avoid a larger tragedy.

Increasing authoritarianism in some countries, such as Russia, coupled with gradual democratic erosion around the world, poses an exceptional threat to a rules-based global order, and consequently to peace and prosperity. The invasion of Ukraine is the most blatant and tragic realization of this threat. Although the current conflict has been ongoing at a low level since at least 2014, the recent escalation in interstate hostilities is on a scale that is unprecedented in recent history and makes real a key assumption that all democratic governments should contemplate: democracy has powerful enemies willing to destroy it.

Russia’s strategic line in the current war on Ukraine doesn’t stop at the Crimea as most maps depict, but goes all the way southwards to the Mediterranean. Maps are more than the depiction of state borders, geographical features, demographic indicators, climatic conditions and all such necessary descriptive information. The way we present maps betrays the way we perceive geopolitical events and crises. Europe must plan for the eventuality that the Eastern Mediterranean is rapidly becoming a dangerous touch point with Russia, particularly now that Turkey has closed the two strategic straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to all warships thus breaking the Russian Navy’s sea bridge between the Crimea to the Mediterranean.

The results of the survey point to four fundamental observations: that war in Europe is no longer unthinkable; that we should respond to Russian aggression; that Europeans’ biggest fears related to the crisis differ from country to country; and that European governments need to plan for various contingencies to ease the burden on ordinary citizens.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decided to recognise the independence of the self-styled separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas. For Ukraine, a nation of almost 44 million people, catastrophe looms large on the horizon. For Europe, these events are the harbinger of the end of an era. Europe’s post-Cold War order is no more.

La guerre en Ukraine renouvelle les interrogations sur le triangle Washington/Pékin/Moscou, et sur la place de l’Europe dans le jeu des puissances. L’expérience de la guerre de Corée peut aider à mesurer les relationsmouvantes entre les trois acteurs : importance relative des théâtres, risquesd’escalade, guerre idéologique, jeu des alliances, dynamique de réarme-ment, débats internes aux États-Unis… Les leçons que tireront Washingtonet Pékin du conflit sont au cœur du débat, en particulier pour Taïwan.

In 2022, EU accession is being applied to boost the war effort of pro-European post-Soviet countries, and to enhance the potency of European common values when they are defended on the battlefield. It remains to be seen how the apparent tectonic shift in the EU approach, i.e. from a mostly "technocratic" accession exercise in recent years, to a value-based "accession through war", will play out in the longer term.

Le déclenchement de la guerre en Ukraine a renforcé les chocs sur les marchés énergétiques. L'Union européenne a compris soudainement le coût de sa dépendance aux hydrocarbures russes et cherche depuis lors à accélérer la diversification de ses approvisionnements et de son mix énergétique. Elle devra aussi apprendre à réduire sa consommation. Au-delà de l'Europe, les impératifs de sécurité énergétique semblent avoir pris le pas sur les objectifs climatiques.

La guerre en Ukraine rebat complètement les pièces de l’échiquier géopolitique mondial. Si la Russie risque de se fourvoyer dans un isolement durable et regrettable, l’Europe est aussi en train de constater son impuissance stratégique et ses multiples dépendances dont celle à l’égard des États-Unis.

Scholars report contradictory findings regarding whether citizens trust media in autocracies. Relying on focus group methodology, this study uses Russian television viewers’ reception of the Russia–Ukraine conflict to investigate media perception in an autocracy. It argues that citizens in non-democracies lack the opportunities, motivation and tools to substantively process news. When perceiving news, they express both critical and supportive reactions towards the regime without integrating them into coherent views and thus support authoritarian equilibrium by being unable to articulate consistent opinions. This argument helps to explain the paradoxes of media (dis)trust and clarifies the process of media perception in authoritarian political systems.

There are questions about troop numbers, questions about diplomacy. There are questions about the Ukrainian military, its weapons, and its soldiers. There are questions about Germany and France: How will they react? There are questions about America, and how it has come to be a central player in a conflict not of its making. But of all the questions that repeatedly arise about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, the one that gets the least satisfactory answers is this one: Why?

Russian military forces have seized two of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as part of the invasion that began on February 24, 2022. The four-unit Chernobyl nuclear plant, whose last operating reactor permanently closed in 2000, was occupied shortly after the start of the invasion. Russian forces then attacked and captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, with six operational reactors, on March 4, 2022. The nuclear plant attacks have caused widespread concern about the potential for radioactive releases and potential war crimes.

La bataille médiatique est une des composantes majeures du conflit avec des enjeux de perception auprès des opinions publiques pour obtenir leur adhésion. À ce jour, Volodymyr Zelensky montre une habileté supérieure à Vladimir Poutine dont la communication paraît complètement décalée et contre-productive.

Media and published views are only a proxy for what China’s leaders think. As Xi Jinping likes to recall, the press has a duty to educate the people along lines that the CCP sets. Yet, as the last decade has shown, it has become much harder to publish expert views on international relations that diverge from CCP lines. If anything, the Ukraine conflict
is no exception, with large elements of convergence among literally all published analyses and opinions. Yet there are also nuances and different accents, sometimes even within the same writing.

L'invasion de l'Ukraine par la Russie en février 2022 n'a pas abouti au résultat escompté par Vladimir Poutine. Les troupes russes ont en effet été confrontées à une forte résistance de l'armée ukrainienne et, plus largement, de la population. L'ampleur et l'efficacité de cette résistance peuvent être expliquées par le développement du sentiment national ukrainien depuis 2014 et par la mise en place, à partir de la même année, d'un réseau de volontaires lié au conflit dans le Donbass.

The West has responded with threats of unprecedented sanctions. This crisis stems from the Soviet Union's collapse and the West's effort to create a 'Europe whole and free' and at peace. The West failed to convince Russia to play a positive role in Europe and to help it do so. NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia, on Russia's borders, would someday become Alliance members. Nevertheless, the US and NATO are conducting serious diplomacy with Russia.

The effects on the wider world from the Ukraine invasion go far beyond the waves of shock and horror being felt from this escalating conflict.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increasingly turned to artillery and aerial bombardment of cities, calls are growing louder for Western nations to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine to protect civilians and thwart the Russian advance.

The pro-Russian protests that spread across the east and south of Ukraine in the aftermath of the Euromaidan Revolution set largely similar regions on starkly different trajectories. While Donbas saw a successful rebellion and later slid into war, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk managed to avoid a separatist scenario. In this article, I examine the critical early stages of the pro-Russian unrest and argue that the initial success of the separatist rebellion in Donbas and its failure in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk can be best explained by the differences in elite strategies and civil society organisation in the respective regions.

Contrary to Kremlin’s expectations, the West is united in its response to the war in Ukraine. The paper argues that this ability to take tough measures towards Moscow is crucial since at stake is nothing less than the very survival of Ukraine and the freedom of the entire Central and Eastern Europe. Possible scenarios for Ukraine and global strategic consequences are also outlined.

Nach knapp zweieinhalb Jahren, in denen Wolodymyr Selenskyj als Präsident der Ukraine amtiert, scheinen Reformen in Schlüsselbereichen zu stocken. Gleichzeitig setzen er und sein Team im innen- wie außenpolitischen Diskurs mehr denn je auf Sicherheitsthemen. Für Deutschland und die EU könnte es in dieser Situation sinnvoll sein, Reformprozesse und Sicherheitsfragen stärker als bislang miteinander zu verknüpfen und klarer zu machen, welche Bedeutung der Ukraine im europäischen
Sicherheitsgefüge zukommen soll.

In July 2021, Russia submitted its first inter-state complaint against Ukraine to the European Court of Human Rights. It was an unexpected and intriguing step of the Russian government, especially since many of the presented allegations are linked to the events that initiated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Referring to the hostilities that began in 2014, the international community was, in principle, unanimous in assessing who the aggressor was. The focus of this research is the strategy of the Russian Federation in its recently initiated legal battle before the Strasbourg Court. This paper presents an attempt to outline the possible motives for taking such a step.

The article explores the Russia-Ukraine crisis of 2014 in the context of post-communist nationalism and the disintegration of the post-Soviet space. The focus is on the politicisation of the ethno-linguistic divide and historical narratives in the interplay between Russia's determination to control Ukraine's political future and Ukraine's resolve to free itself from Russian influence.

Ten years after the January 2009 gas crisis, Russian-Ukrainian gas relations are at another turning point: the then concluded contracts are terminating on 31 December 2019. While trilateral talks brokered by the EU Commission have started in July 2018, the real negotiations about the future of this relationship can be expected to start no earlier than in December, that is in the midst of the winter and a second to midnight. Crucial months lie ahead.

The annexation of Crimea and the Russia enabled rebellion in Donbas created a need for radical improvements of Ukrainian military capability. This study discusses how different, mostly domestic, reform drivers and reform impeding factors had impact on the pace of Ukrainian top-down defence reform in the period since the confrontation with Russia started in 2014. It concludes that reform has been uneven, and that while vested organizational interests and dominant organizational ideas explain much of the slowness of reform, also corruption played a significant role.

Au sein de l’Europe, l’Ukraine demeure un point chaud entre emprise russe et souhait de rejoindre l’Union européenne. L’importance géographique et stratégique de ce pays justifie d’analyser finement ses complexes évolutions géopolitiques. Et un regard sur la Moldavie voisine permet de mieux comprendre les imbroglios territoriaux dans cette région.

Since 2014, much of Europe’s public debate on Ukraine has revolved around the geopolitical contest between the West and Russia, the war in Donbas, and their security implications for Europe. But, at its core, Ukraine’s revolution of dignity was an anti-corruption uprising that only became geopolitical later. The EU, US, and NATO must ensure that security and judicial reforms remain high in the minds of the Zelensky administration and of Rada members.

Under the terms of their Association Agreements with the EU, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova are expected to strengthen the independence of the judiciary, establish zero tolerance of corruption in the legal profession, and reform legislation regarding prosecutors, judges and lawyers. In Ukraine, the challenge is how to prolong and channel the positive reform dynamic to firmly anchor institutional and procedural change in the justice sector.

The government that followed the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine has pushed a decentralisation agenda. After decades of Soviet style top-down governance, the status and role of local governments has been pushed to the fore. If implemented successfully, it could increase local development and political engagement, ultimately contributing to increased political stability in Ukraine and Europe. Yet the significance of decentralization reforms is often lost in the noise surrounding Crimea, the secessionist conflict in the east, and the political power struggles in Kiev.

La lecture de l’histoire ukrainienne est très différente selon qu’on se situe à Kiev ou à Moscou. En Russie, le discours officiel tend à considérer l’Ukraine comme une partie de la grande nation russe. En Ukraine, on voit s’affirmer une lecture qui fait l’impasse sur l’époque soviétique, au risque de valoriser des courants nationalistes extrémistes.

This article's central question: how does trust matter in the process of decision-making during crisis? Our argument is that uncertainty during the crisis enabled trust-building between the actors: Member States and European institutions. In the case of the Ukrainian crisis, this happened in parallel to the decreasing levels of trust in EU–Russia relations.

La crise ukrainienne a révélé le rôle central des réseaux d’information internationaux comme instruments de diplomatie publique en temps de guerre. Le présent article aborde le versant médiatique de ce conflit dissymétrique entre la Russie et l’Ukraine au prisme de deux canaux médiatiques, RT et Ukraine Today.

The challenge of transforming Ukrainian institutions requires a smarter, more flexible and more differentiated approach to using EU assistance for individual projects.

The essay examines the impact of the Euromaidan protests and the subsequent Russian aggression on Ukrainian national identity. It demonstrates that national identity has become more salient vis-à-vis other territorial and non-territorial identities. At the same time, the very meaning of belonging to the Ukrainian nation has changed, as manifested first and foremost in increased alienation from Russia and the greater embrace of Ukrainian nationalism. Although popular perceptions are by no means uniform across the country, the main dividing line has shifted eastwards and now lies between the Donbas and the adjacent east-southern regions.

This report analyses Russian propaganda and disinformation – here collectively called strategic deception – concerning the conflict in Ukraine. The strategic deception is not exclusively a Russian term, but it does capture what the authors think is an essential feature of the current Russian foreign and security policy. It is driven by attempts to put the adversary into a defensive posture and off balance, and thus, to create conditions for surprise.

This paper argues that, despite advances in democratisation as a result of the revolutionary events of 2013-2014, the essential features of Ukraine's party system have not changed. The legislative, ideological and organisational foundations of the Ukrainian party-political landscape and parliamentary politics have remained fragile.

This paper examines Russia's view of contemporary Ukraine from the period of the Euromaidan protests that peaked in February 2014 to the present. It looks at both the official Moscow view, as well as that of leading Russian think tanks, and how these opinions are being disseminated in narrative form through media and social networks. It provides an assessment of why Russian opted to intervene in Ukraine. It then focuses on the significance of historical questions in the rift between the two states that began with Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and continued as fighting broke out in the Donbas. How do the two states differ on the interpretation of the past and how is it reflected in Russian and Ukrainian initiatives today?

The paper argues the large-scale mobilisation of Ukrainian society is the most significant legacy of Euromaidan and its tragic aftermath. Civil society intervened to fill the gap created by the state's failure turning de facto into a security actor. Hence, post-Maidan civil society has displayed the potential to act as a "change agent" determined to induce substantial reforms in Ukraine.

The MH17 air-crash disaster of July 17 is likely to have a severe impact on the development of the Donbas conflict in Ukraine as well as on EU-Russia relations. Written before the tragedy, this working paper argues that the ‘Euromaidan' protests, that occurred between December 2013 and February 2014, have provoked two fundamental changes that give grounds for cautious optimism about Ukraine's incipient transition to democracy.