Political Crisis In Ukraine Research Articles

Эволюция британского подхода к кризису в Украине и отношениям с Россией

The article covers the role the Great Britain has played as a fourth independent political actor of international relations, along with the U.S., EU and NATO, in the political crisis in Ukraine from its very beginning (2014), and in finding quick and effective ways of solving it. The article also explores the worsening of the bilateral relationship between UK and Russia under the influence of the 2014–2015 Ukrainian crisis, in a wide context of antagonism between the U.S. and Russia. There are several factors introduced in the article which hampered the crisis from the start and which still can be used to improve the bilateral relations in the nearest future. The author scrutinizes the evolution of the Britain's stance on the Ukrainian upheaval at the beginning of 2014, the Crimea annexation/joining perceived as a violation of the international law, Russia's interference in the conflict in the Eastern territories of Ukraine, and the imposing of sever EU and U.S. sanctions against Russia. The article highlights the influence of the Ukrainian crisis on the strengthening of Anglo-American “special relations” and on the revival of the NATO strategic role as a tool to confront Russia not only in this conflict, but also on the world stage. The author tries to assess the scope of damage for the UK–Russia relationship made by the Ukrainian crisis and answer the questions: where has British participation in this crisis boosted the Great Britain's world standing, when can the UK–Russia relations become better again, and what can help improve the relationship between two countries?

Кризис украинской государственности: политико-правовой, ценностный и геоэкономический аспекты

The article focuses on the complex political, legal, sociocultural and geopolitical problems initiated by the political crisis in Ukraine. The authors analyze the historical and socio-political prerequisites and the global context of the Ukrainian crisis. In the light of this crisis, prospects of the geopolitical and geoeconomic reconfiguration of the former Soviet Union are considered. Special attention is paid to the problems of state consolidation, to the dysfunctions of the democratic process, to the efficiency of democratic political institutions. The transformations of the constitutional and legal system and of political regime are analyzed in the context of the current crisis. Risks of state insolvency and possible disintegration of Ukraine, prospects of reestablishment of the state as an option of crisis recovery, destructive practices of the post-revolutionary period, and the role of informal institutes in Ukrainian policy are evaluated. These factors contribute to a rapid growth of cleavages in the Ukrainian society – in many respects because of the ethnic centered nation building policy and of xenophobic mobilization. Comparative analysis of the Ukrainian and Russian experiences post-Soviet transformation of political systems reveals two different variants of interaction and mutual control of oligarchy, bureaucracy and political personalistic regimes. As a result of this interactions two different solutions to the problem of civic nation building in a post-Soviet transformation context emerge. Which of these options may be more successful remains an open question.

New Trends and Challenges for Energy Geographies: Introduction to The Special Issue

New Trends and Challenges for Energy Geographies: Introduction to The Special Issue

CORRUPTION AND POLITICAL CRISIS IN UKRAINE

Abstract. The article reviews issues of corruption and political crisis in Ukraine in the context of international organisations reports that estimate corruption levels and entrepreneurial climate worldwide. The article examines countries of the European Union and member states of the Customs Union, asseses the political crisis in Ukraine. Keywords: corruption, Ukraine, politics, member states of the European Union, member states of the Customs Union, legislation, crisis. With its tentacles сorruption embraced all spheres of public administration in Ukraine, affected all branches of Ukrainian national authorities, and constituted a principal source of political crisis in the county. We can only suppose how Ukrainian society would have responded the decision to stop Euro-integration and redirect the development vector towards the Customs Union , granted the state had been strictly observing the constitutional law, freedoms and guarantees. What would have happened, if the same change occurred under condition that independent courts were functioning normally, the state were performing effective political housecleaning (instead of just making show), carrying out anti-corruption foreign and domestic policy and providing for a favourable entrepreneurial environment?! Indeed, can the states held together by bonds of customs agreements boast of having healthy, transparent economics or of being «corruption free»? We have reasons to believe that Ukraine’s refusal to sign an agreement about association with the European Union was a mere pretext! We drew this conclusion on the basis of analysing the situation in Ukraine after 2010, i.e. after Yanukovich came to power. For this purpose we used analytic and statistical data received in Ukraine and in other countries. We studied reports of international organisations that give appraisals of corruption levels, anti-corruption policies, and conditions for developing entrepreneurial business for countries all over the world. For comparative examination there were chosen states and republics that are member

Publicity and Media under Communism and After: The Destruction of Privacy

AT first glance, it may seem oddly inappropriate that someone from today’s Ukraine would discuss its media in terms of the postcommunist destruction of privacy rather than by examining violations of freedom of speech. The “destruction of privacy” naturally implies the encroachment of what was once dubbed the “public sphere” on the formerly “private” territories, and of all the postcommunist European states (with the understandable exception of totalitarian Belarus), Ukraine has become notoriously known for just the opposite: the state’s brutal attempts to silence the sphere of public discussion wherever it interferes with the private interests of those in power. One may say that such attempts illustrate the durability of the “good old Soviet” ways of keeping things secret. Yet, I will try to show that, paradoxically enough, it is precisely the profound current political crisis in Ukraine, unleashed by the discovery in late 2000 of the headless corpse of Internet journalist Heorhij Gongadze, that can help us reveal the transformations in the very structure of publicity and privacy that have occurred since the collapse of communism. I will approach the problem both as an intellectual, professionally destined to hanker at the essence of things seen through accidents , and as one of contemporary Ukraine’s public figures whose past five years of life have, to a considerable extent, been spent in SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Spring 2002) Publicity and Media under Communism and After: The Destruction of Privacy BY OKSANA ZABUZHKO© 2002 by Oksana Zabuzhko. All rights reserved. the media spotlight and who, therefore, has had a chance to learn from her own personal experience that which may still call for a thorough scholarly study. My most recent experience is worth some scrutiny. On the same day I received the invitation to deliver this paper, I attended a press conference held by a public initiative group announcing “The Loser of the Year” awards (the alternative to the “Man of the Year” awards, the pompous and sumptuous “royal court” ceremony celebrating mainly pro-presidentially oriented, high-ranking officials, businessmen, and media people). The group had chosen President Leonid Kuchma as “Linguist of the Year” (“for the contribution he has made to Ukrainian public discourse,” the ironic formula referring to the tapes on which Kuchma was allegedly heard discussing the aforementioned journalist and using vulgar language), and I was asked to present the award. The room was overcrowded, the audience amused and agitated, and many (though not all) private television stations and newspapers reported the event. What stunned me, however, was something else. None of the journalists at the press conference raised the question that I was specifically prepared to answer: the authenticity of the notorious tapes tacitly taken as the main source of the president’s “innovative” discourse. There can be only one reason why this did not happen: whatever the judicial aspects of “tapegate ” may be, the language of the person on the tapes perfectly fits the president’s personality as it had been gradually revealed to the public on radio and television. Foul words notwithstanding, it was first and foremost the speaker’s personality, or, more precisely , the characteristic individual mixture of the vulgar and boorish old Soviet apparatchik’s ways with the semicriminal manners of the post-Soviet nouveau riche, that sounded so instantly recognizable that there could hardly have been any doubt concerning the speaker’s identity. Here, I believe, lies the mark that separates us from our communist past. If we rewind the tape of history some 15 years back (to the days before perestroika), we must admit that, whatever the 36 SOCIAL RESEARCH attitudes of the public toward the ruling elite might have been, it was altogether impossible to imagine them conversing in private. The true revolution launched by Gorbachev (a revolution still underestimated, and of which he himself certainly was not aware) consisted of the fact that he was the first communist leader in decades who had chosen to reveal himself to the public as a private person: a Soviet leader with a wife in flesh and blood who gave interviews to the press (however censored!) and met people and argued in public with his “uncensored” opponents; performing , on the...

An unfulfilling partnership: Ukraine and the West, 1991–2001

The political crisis in Ukraine in early 2001 and then the terrorist attacks against the US and the resulting dramatic change of international setting have sealed the trend that had emerged much earlier: the once promising partnership between Ukraine and the West has ended up in mutual unhappiness. As the West is discovering new ‘geopolitical pivots’ in the aftermath of 11 September, Ukraine has almost disappeared from the radar screen of Western attention. Yet for good reasons what happens in Ukraine, a currently uncertain and weakened country with a poor international reputation, still matters for the West. There has always been a close link between Ukraine's transition and Western attitudes towards Ukraine. This might be the moment to think afresh about past and future Western policies vis‐à‐vis Ukraine.