Yesterday, Russia and Ukraine reached a gas deal after months of tense negotiations against the backdrop of violence in Ukraine’s east that has left more than 3,700 people dead. The agreement took place just days after Ukraine’s snap parliamentary elections, which showed surprisingly robust support for pro-European parties. But challenges remain, both in the east, where pro-Russian separatists will stage their own unsanctioned elections this weekend, and in Kiev, where the government must overcome a legacy of corruption and dysfunction. The elections have been hailed as a triumph in the West, and for good reason. Ukrainians resoundingly rejected the far-right [...]
Yesterday, Kosovo’s Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj visited Serbia, the first minister of Kosovo to do so since it declared independence from Serbia in 2008. While 110 United Nations member states, including the United States, recognize Kosovo’s independence, Serbia does not. Neither does Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, received a hero’s welcome with a military parade in Belgrade last week. Kosovo’s closest ally is neighboring Albania, whose prime minister was supposed to visit Serbia this week but postponed after a drone carrying an Albanian nationalist banner flew over a soccer match in Belgrade earlier this month, sparking a brawl and a [...]
Nowhere does Russia’s policy of protecting its “compatriots”—Moscow’s loosely defined term for the Russian diaspora and Russian-speakers residing in the former Soviet republics—spell as much concern for the current post-Cold War order as in the Baltic states. All three Baltic states have significant numbers of Russian-speakers that are concentrated in territories close to the Russian border. In Lithuania, Russian-speakers make up 15 percent of the entire population; in Latvia 34 percent; and in Estonia the number might be as high as 30 percent. This has been a major source of worry for the Baltic states, because in the recent past [...]
