Ukrainian soldiers muster at a point close to Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, Aug. 20, 2014 (AP photo by Petro Zadorozhnyy).

Ever since the 2004 “Orange Revolution” that led to its first turn toward the West, Ukraine’s future alignment between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic bloc has been the subject of much debate and speculation. The promise of a durable Western shift, already dimmed by 2010, receded even further under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, who tried to steer a middle course between Moscow and Brussels with some success until pressure from Brussels and Moscow, but also Ukraine’s pro-European public opinion, made nonalignment no longer tenable. Since the Euromaidan protests that drove Yanukovych from power in February 2014 and through the emergence […]

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses a conference held on the occasion of the 5th anniversary his government, Budapest, Hungary, May 29, 2015 (Szilard Koszticsak/MTI via AP).

Earlier this month, European ministers met in Luxembourg to discuss the Mediterranean migrant crisis and the redistribution of asylum seekers. Though France and Germany voluntarily committed to take in 21,000 migrants, other European Union member states rejected the call for a mandatory quota system. Leading that call was one of the most vocal opponents of the EU’s asylum and migration policy: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Last month, Orban defiantly suspended the asylum rules known as the Dublin Regulation, which allows refugees to be sent back to the country where they first requested asylum, citing technical difficulties with its implementation. […]