Voting Advice Applications in Pre-Electoral Ukraine
July 26, 2019 7 min. read

PROвибір and other electronic instruments are helping Ukrainians to distinguish parties according to their political, socio-economic and cultural agendas Which party to vote for in an election? In Ukraine, like in countries around the world, people are making their political decisions based on a range of factors from emotional attraction to rational calculation. In the […]

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How Distrust toward Voting Advice Applications May Lower the Quality of Ukraine’s Parliamentary Elections
July 17, 2019 3 min. read

Kyiv’s main media outlets keep ignoring Ukraine’s new voting advice applications So far, Ukraine’s major newspapers and electronic media have largely ignored the freely available novel Ukrainian voting advice applications (VAAs) designed to help voters to make more informed and rational decisions on 21 July. VAAs are computerized instruments that summarize in circa 15 to 40 statements […]

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Critical Questions for Ukraine’s New President: A List of Issues for this Year’s Reform Agenda and Kyiv’s Relations to the West
June 13, 2019 8 min. read

On 20 May 2019, Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was inaugurated. Later this year, the European Parliamentary elections will lead to the formation of new EU leadership in Brussels. Finally, Ukraine’s upcoming parliamentary elections this summer or autumn will likely reconfigure much of the – if not the entire – Ukrainian governmental elite, and lead […]

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Secondary literature list for my seminar “Ukraine between the European and Eurasian Unions” @UniJena, in April-June 2019 (books, journals, websites)
March 13, 2019 15 min. read

“Ukraine between the European and Eurasian Unions: Revolution, War, Reform” The seminar aims to introduce Master-students into one of Europe’s critical conflicts today, and to illustrate, using the example of Ukraine, inter-relation between Europeanization, post-Soviet transformation and security politics. We will touch upon general themes of European studies, like democracy promotion, neighborhood policies, transposition of […]

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De-bunking Russian Language Myths About Ukraine and the Baltics
February 13, 2019 7 min. read

Since conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine in early 2014, regional observers have worried that Russia could instigate a similar incursion in the Baltics to ‘protect ethnic Russians.’ Seemingly – goes the narrative – the ethnic Russians are identified as those who speak Russian. The reality in these countries, however, is far from that clear-cut distinction. […]

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Russia, Ukraine, and the Sea of Azov
January 15, 2019 13 min. read

On November 25, three Ukrainian naval vessels, two 54-ton gunboats (technically, Gyurza-M-class armored artillery cutters) and a tug, were traveling from Odessa around the Crimean Peninsula and toward the Sea of Azov, en route to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. As they approached the Kerch Strait, the access route from the Black Sea to […]

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Why Warsaw Should Go Soft on Kyiv
January 8, 2019 16 min. read

The recently intensifying memory conflict around the interpretation of some World War II events, between Ukraine and Poland, is distracting the two intertwined nations from their main international challenges and some critical tasks today. An increase of Ukrainian national security is in the core interests not only of Kyiv, but also of Warsaw. An odd […]

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How to Talk about Ukrainian Politics in the West?
January 4, 2019 11 min. read

Hyperbolic warnings about allegedly disastrous consequences of a Tymoshenko presidency are demobilizing Western support for Ukrainian reforms and defense My recent article “What Would a Tymoshenko Presidency Mean?” for the Ukraine Alert of Washington’s Atlantic Council has caused indignation among numerous Ukrainian experts and journalists – some of them hitherto close colleagues and professional friends. […]

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Why and How Ukraine Should Open Up to the EU Now
December 25, 2018 10 min. read

Kyiv should foster Ukraine’s European integration, economic growth and national security by offering EU citizens instantaneous residence and work permission Recent Eurostat data reveals that Ukrainians have been granted the most residency permits of any nationals in the EU last year. During 2017 alone, approximately 662,000 Ukrainians received such permission to live and work in […]

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As Good as It Gets: Why the West Should Start Preparing Itself to a Ukraine under President Tymoshenko
December 22, 2018 14 min. read

The prominent Western commentator of post-Soviet affairs Taras Kuzio has recently come forward with a barrel of English-language attacks on Ukrainian opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko – so far, the clear front-runner in Ukraine’s upcoming presidential elections in March 2019. Kuzio has placed several critical and partly denigrating texts about Tymoshenko in reputed analytical outlets, such […]

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Summary of Large October-November 2018 Political Poll in Ukraine: Tymoshenko and Her Fatherland Party Are, so far, Clear Front-Runners for the 2019 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections
December 4, 2018 2 min. read

Summary of especially comprehensive poll (ca. 10,000 respondents) jointly conducted by Ukraine’s three leading sociological services KIIS, Razumkov Centre and Rating Group, in October-November 2018: (1) Prominent presidential candidates’ rating among citizens who have made up their minds and plan to vote: Tymoshenko (Fatherland) –   21%, Zelenskyi (comedian) –           11%, Poroshenko […]

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The Glazyev Tapes, Origins of the Donbas Conflict, and Minsk Agreements
September 13, 2018 17 min. read

What are the origins of the armed conflict that has been raging in eastern Ukraine since 2014? Which role did Russia play in the emergence and escalation of the originally unarmed confrontation, in the Donets Basin (Donbas), after the victory of the Euromaidan revolution? When, how and to what degree exactly did Moscow get involved? […]

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