Author: TheConversation

By Nicole Jackson, Associate Professor of International Studies, Simon Fraser University The war in Ukraine is dividing the former Soviet region, making it poorer and less secure. Russia will take advantage of this. As a student three decades ago, I watched the Soviet Union collapse and 15 new states, including Ukraine, escape its grip. Now, three months into Vladimir Putin’s brutal assault on Ukraine, the other post-Soviet countries are being transformed in three ways that will change the course of the region’s future. Here is how. Altering geopolitics The war is changing the geopolitics of the region. The Baltic...

By Michael Butler, Associate Professor of Political Science, Clark University Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dominated headlines since late February 2022. The war struck a nerve among Western audiences, evoking a high degree of support for Ukraine. The reasons for the prominence of the war in the West are many and varied. A ground war in Europe launched by a major military power evokes the ghosts of World War II. This is especially true when the attacking country has designs on territory it considers integral to its nation, and is led by a personalist authoritarian regime where all power...

By David Roger Marples, Distinguished University Professor of Russian and East European History, University of Alberta The Russian war on Ukraine has lasted well over 100 days. It has exacerbated a critical demographic situation in Ukraine, one that saw its population fall from 52.5 million in 1991 at the time of independence to a projected 43.2 million in 2022 prior to the outbreak of war. The population fall was attributed to a low birth rate, high mortality rate and emigration. During the presidency of Petro Poroshenko from 2014 to 2019, Ukraine became the poorest country in Europe, surpassing Moldova...

By Kseniya Oksamytna, Lecturer in International Politics, City, University of London Former war crimes prosecutor Sir Howard Morrison recently highlighted the dangers posed by the negative, often insulting and dehumanizing, statements made by some Russian politicians and media personalities about Ukraine and its people. “Genocide is often rooted in the way that one nation or one ethnic group views another and how it describes them,” Morrison said, citing the way Nazis referred to the Poles as “subhuman” before and during the second world war, or the way Hutu elites in Rwanda referred to Tutsis as “cockroaches” before the 1994...