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.
Putin interprets the victory of the Maidan in Ukraine as a victory of anti-Russian and pro-Western forces. He is very concerned about the possibility of having an anti-Russian state right on the Russian border.
The crisis in Crimea is perhaps the most dangerous point in Europe’s history since the end of the cold war. It is likely to alter fundamentally relations between Russia and the West and lead to changes in the global power balance.
Putin may yet find out what many others found out before him, that breaking a country is a lot easier than putting it back together.
If Putin follows through on his threat to invade Ukraine, the damage to Russia’s relations with the West will be deep and lasting.
The crisis in Crimea is the most dangerous moment since the end of the Cold War, with the risk of not only an escalation of tension between Ukraine and Russia, but also between Russia and NATO.
The possibility of a Russian military operation in Ukraine that is not limited to Crimea is real. Russia and the West are on the verge a confrontation far worse than over Georgia in 2008.
Some kind of political crisis in Crimea looks almost inevitable. At the moment the priority has to be stop having a military one as well.
The situation in Ukraine is very unstable and dangerous, and Moscow's support of the delayed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and non-recognition of the new authorities in Kyiv only adds to the tension.
Crimea is the most serious potential conflict in postrevolutionary Ukraine. The crisis could lead to a hot war in Ukraine and dramatically increase tensions between Russia and the West—no effort should be spared to avert this scenario.
The collapse of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine became another posthumous chapter in the breakup of the Soviet Union. It will severely curtail Russia’s leadership ambitions in the post-Soviet space.