Europe

Using insights from the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC) dataset, this policy brief outlines key trends in the use of sexual violence in Russia’s war against Ukraine between 2014 and 2021, describing the reported perpetrators, where it occurred, and what forms it took.

In the past year, it has been vital to keep in mind one axiom that has become a cliché: the fog of war is dense and thickened by disinformation and propaganda. To ensure we have our feet on a solid foundation as we try to interpret the latest news from Ukraine, we created a weekly Report Card. 

U.S. President Joe Biden spent five hours in the Ukrainian capital on Monday, meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky and even taking a stroll through the streets of Kyiv – despite the sound of air sirens – to visit The Wall of Remembrance, which displays portraits of the approximately 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers who have died since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The trip was kept under a media blackout until a few hours after Biden’s arrival, with the president’s official schedule only saying he would fly in the evening to Warsaw for a planned visit. The New York Times reported, quoting an anonymous official source, that Biden arrived in Kyiv early this morning after making the same 10-hour long journey from Poland that every world leader visiting Ukraine since the start of the war has.

Ad un anno dall'inizio dell'invasione russa in Ucraina, i Paesi europei si sono ritrovati a Monaco per discutere le conseguenze di una guerra inaspettata e protratta. Insieme al presidente ucraino Volodymyr Zelensky, il cancelliere tedesco Olaf Scholz e il presidente francese Emmanuel Macron hanno aperto i lavori sottolineando la necessita di una forte coesione transatlantica a sostegno dell'Ucraina.

Insieme ai leader di Francia e Germania, la presenza del primo ministro inglese, dei presidenti di Svezia, Finlandia, Danimarca, Moldavia, Estonia e Lituania ha evidenziato come il baricentro politico dell'Europa si sia spostato nettamente a favore dei Paesi nordici e baltici.

Stephen Walt explains why Putin understood that Ukraine's fate was more important to Russia than it was to the West.

Stephen Walt argues that states that can attract and retain allies are more likely to succeed than those whose actions cause others to join forces against them.

Stephen Walt enumerates five lessons that leaders and publics around the world might learn after a year of war in Ukraine.

Great powers may expand their state or empire by choice, or by accident. Nearly 25 percent of important historical instances of great power expansion have been initiated by actors on the periphery without authorization from the center. Leaders at the center are often constrained from withdrawing from new territory, unless they foresee high costs from staying.

Nathaniel L. Moir explains why, given the U.S. military’s recent prioritization of large-scale combat operations, Howard University Professor and former French Resistance fighter Bernard Fall's thoughts about a similar prioritization of conventional warfare in Vietnam seem prescient. 

Meghan Garrity details the history of mass expulsions since the centennial of the signing of the Lausanne Convention—a treaty codifying the compulsory “population exchange” between Greece and Turkey. An estimated 1.5 million people were forcibly expelled from their homes: over one million Greek Orthodox Christians from the Ottoman Empire and 500,000 Muslims from Greece.