Discerning the early stages of the rebirth of a new Russian empire from the ashes of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin and Russia‘s Imperial Revival argues that Russia‘s recent overtly aggressive actions and foreign policy doctrines have signaled a renewal of the Cold War. At the least, Russia‘s actions represent the potential for renewal. This book explains these developments in a historical context.The book begins by describing Russia‘s initial policy of rapprochement after the collapse o...

Fiona Hill and other U.S. public servants have been recognized as Guardians of the Year in TIME's 2019 Person of the Year issue.From the KGB to the Kremlin: a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West.Where do Vladimir Putin's ideas come from? How does he look at the outside world? What does he want, and how far is he willing to go?The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actio...

**“Compelling.… [E]rudite, objective and immensely readable.” —Ben Hall, Financial TimesAn authoritative history of Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Gates of Europe.**Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war—and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians ha...

The unfolding crisis in Ukraine has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. As Russia and Ukraine tussle for Crimea and the eastern regions, relations between Putin and the West have reached an all-time low. How did we get here? Richard Sakwa here unpicks the context of conflicted Ukrainian identity and of Russo-Ukrainian relations and traces the path to the recent disturbances through the events which have forced Ukraine, a country internally divided between East and West, to ch...

When guns began firing again in Europe, why was it Ukraine that became the battlefield? Conventional wisdom dictates that Ukraine's current crisis can be traced to the linguistic differences and divided political loyalties that have long fractured the country. However this theory only obscures the true significance of Ukraine's recent civic revolution and the conflict's crucial international dimension. The 2013-14 Ukrainian revolution presented authoritarian powers in Russia with both a de...

The first edition of The New Cold War was published to great critical acclaim. Edward Lucas has established himself as a top expert in the field, appearing on numerous programs, including Lou Dobbs, MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, CNN, and NPR.Since The New Cold War was first published in February 2008, Russia has become more authoritarian and corrupt, its institutions are weaker, and reforms have fizzled. In this revised and updated third edition, Lucas includes...

In this new Brookings Marshall Paper, Michael O'Hanlon argues that now is the time for Western nations to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in eastern Europe to stabilize the region and reduce the risks of war with Russia. He believes NATO expansion has gone far enough. The core concept of this new security architecture would be one of permanent neutrality. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc, from Europe's far north to its south: Finland a...

"We don't yet know where the current battle is headed. But Puri's 'first cut' will help us greatly in fathoming how we got here." – Patrick Porter, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham***When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, many in the West were left stunned at his act of brutal imperialism. To those who had been paying attention, however, the warning signs of the bloodshed and slaughter to come had been there fo...

Ukraine is embroiled in a bloody civil war. Both sides stand accused of collaborating with fascists, of committing war crimes, of serving foreign interests. This proxy-war between Russia and the West was accompanied by a fierce information war. This book separates fact from fiction with extensive and reliable documentation. While remaining critical of Russia and the Donbass rebellion, De Ploeg demonstrates that many of the recent disasters can be traced to Ukrainian ultranationalists, pro-...

The Ukrainian crisis that dominated headlines in fall 2013 was decades in the making. Two great schisms shaped events: one within Ukraine, its western and southeastern parts divided along cultural and political lines; the other was driven by geopolitical factors. Competition between Russia and the West exacerbated Ukraine's divisions.This study focuses on the historical background and complex causality of the crisis, from the rise of mass demonstrations on Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnos...

Disorder erupted in Ukraine in 2014, involving the overthrow of a sitting government, the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and a violent insurrection, supported by Moscow, in the east of the country.This Adelphi book argues that the crisis has yielded a ruinous outcome, in which all the parties are worse off and international security has deteriorated. This negative-sum scenario resulted from years of zero-sum behaviour on the part of Russia and the West in pos...

The Putin Plan: In His Own Words presents a concentrated account of Vladimir Putin's political thinking through speeches, statements, and public interventions associated with his leadership of post-Soviet Russia. Its organizing themes include national sovereignty, state authority, economic modernization, security, relations with the West, and Russia's place in global affairs. Rather than unfolding as a conventional autobiography, the book belongs to the tradition of political self-portrait...