This is a legacy website featuring a collection of work by the Carnegie Endowment’s global network of scholars on topics including Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and the post-Soviet states. This site is a product of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace based in Washington, D.C. For more recent work by Carnegie scholars in this field, please visit Carnegie Politika.
If the investigators’ verdict on the Malaysia Airlines plane crash does eventually fall against Russia, Vladimir Putin will survive politically, but will have to work hard to restore faith in him, and his good fortune.
With the international investigation of the Malaysian plane crash yet to begin in earnest, the West will base its understanding on evidence supplied mainly by the United States and Russia will see Western actions as punishment not for shooting down the plane, but rather for Moscow’s position on Ukraine.
MH17 may well be a turning point in the Ukraine conflict, but President Putin remains unlikely to back down despite economic pressure from the West. Russians may look back to the summer of 2014 years from now as a game changer.
An independent inquiry into the Malaysia Airlines plane crash over eastern Ukraine and an immediate ceasefire by all sides could be the first step in a process to reverse the trend toward mutual destruction within Ukraine and beyond.
The downing of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane over Eastern Ukraine catapults the crisis there onto the global plane. The tragic and sudden loss of so many innocent lives should put a final point to the armed conflict—or it may put the international conflict over Ukraine on a much higher and more dangerous level.
The Ukraine crisis is testing the complex relationship between Europe, America, and Russia. Yet the gap between the United States and its European allies, as far as policies toward Russia are concerned, is wide and deep.
Vladimir Putin's trip to Latin America is aimed to demonstrate several things, both geopolitically and economically. Latin America will undoubtedly add to the agenda of U.S.-Russian relations.
Russia has stepped forward in Ukraine to protect its vital interests—which the West saw as aggression by a revisionist power. The ensuing conflict will last long and have an impact far beyond Europe.
President Shevardnadze belongs to the people of Georgia. At the same time, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze will forever remain a major figure in Russia’s history, because he helped wind down the Cold War.
Russia could use the U.S.-led sanctions to begin its long-delayed re-industrialization and to start building a modern economy.