Corruption overshadows Ukraine aid package
“You can’t catch a big fish with a small, thin rod” said Volodymyr Groysman, the prime minister of Ukraine, when asked why not a single “big fish” has been… Read more »
Category: Central/Eastern Europe
Civil Society in Eastern Europe and Eurasia: Thriving, or Just Surviving?
Is the trend to restrict civil society, visible in Russia and neighboring countries, getting worse? In some of the countries of the former communist world, it has become more difficult… Read more »
Ukraine: ‘democracy is not a free gift’
Following Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004/ 2005 and the Euromaidan demonstrations that began in November 2013, Ukraine’s path towards democracy and European integration finally appeared to be a smooth… Read more »
After 25 years, can Ukraine turn the corner?
The International Monetary Fund is today widely expected to approve a disbursement of least $1bn for war-torn Ukraine that was delayed for a year amid a domestic political crisis and… Read more »
Illiberal international seeks ‘cultural counter-revolution’
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, have proclaimed a counter-revolution aimed at turning the European Union into an… Read more »
Proscribing pollster, Kremlin ‘takes control of the narrative’
Russia’s only major independent pollster, the Levada Centre, has been designated as a “foreign agent”, the Russian Justice Ministry said on Monday, two weeks ahead of nationwide parliamentary elections. Foreign… Read more »
Populism – a danger to democracy
The conventional wisdom that populists want to bring politics closer to the people or even clamor for direct democracy could not be more mistaken, notes Jan Werner Müller, a professor… Read more »
Maidan ‘democratized Ukrainian culture’, bred resilient civil society
UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons Chaloka Beyani will visit Ukraine in the period from September 1 until September 9 for meetings with government representatives,… Read more »
Reforming Ukraine after the revolutions
Sergii Leshchenko and Mustafa Nayyem [above] were two muckraking journalists who had contempt for Ukraine’s corrupt political system. So they became politicians, Joshua Yaffa writes for The New Yorker:… Read more »
Crimean Tatar activist still confined in mental hospital
Leading Crimean Tatar representative Ilmi Umerov has not been released from a mental hospital, his lawyer Mark Feygin said. “Together with Ilmi’s family we came to the hospital. He… Read more »