The recent debate about providing military assistance to Ukraine has relevance for the efforts to overcome the current impasse in the Minsk Process and the Normandy Format in particular, and thus the search for a resolution to the conflict regarding the Donbas. But it also concerns larger...

World media have hailed the victory of Maia Sandu in the Moldovan presidential elec­tions on 15 November. They celebrated it as a triumph of democracy and pro-Western preferences over post-Soviet cronyism, authoritarianism and Russian apologists. The reality is more complex while there are few...

The ongoing military and political escalations in and around Donbas - including the increase in Russian military deployments near Ukraine's borders - represent one of the most severe security crises in Europe since Russia's aggression against Ukraine in 2014. The patterns of Russian military...

The Biden-Putin summit in June 2021 has brought more questions than answers. It was a highly debated move - particularly in the United States - ever since the possibility of the event was announced in April. The outcomes of the high-profile bilateral meeting are still elusive. Despite these, the...

The euphoria felt by both domestic and foreign liberal audiences following the victory of a pro-reform party in Moldova is now receding. The new Moldovan leadership has stumbled in fulfilling its main electoral promise, namely to fight corruption by effectively reforming the justice system....

Despite what looked like tremendous efforts by the West to deter Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the Kremlin started a full-scale military invasion across the Ukrainian border from the north, east, and south. Clarifying why these deterrence efforts did not work as expected could provide...

Climate policy in the European Union (EU) and Germany changed significantly with the adoption of net-zero emissions targets. A key new development is the growing importance of carbon management. The umbrella term includes not only the capture and storage of CO2 (carbon capture and storage, CCS),...

For some time now, both Ukrainians and foreign observers have been inquiring whether the time is right for a 'Third Maidan'. The protests that took place on 17 October 2017 and in subsequent weeks were not the beginning of anything larger. Rather, they were initiated primarily by political...

Since the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of the war in Eastern Ukraine in spring 2014, the EU has largely been in crisis-management mode vis-à-vis Russia. During the past six years, it has become clear that Russia's actions towards Ukraine are not a stand-alone crisis, but rather the...