Кафедра політології

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Browsing Кафедра політології by Author "Umland, Andreas"

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    Commentary: should Washington have pressed Kyiv into a compromise with Moscow?
    (2022) Umland, Andreas
    This article was submitted in late 2021, and became dated after Russia's demonstrative preparation as well as start of an open, large-scale invasion of Ukraineearly 2022. We nevertheless publish this commentary here in order to document the debate about the events leading to the escalation. No adaptations to the original 2021 article were made after the outbreak of high-intensity war on 24 February 2022. Avoiding a larger military escalation in the Russian–Ukrainian conflict is an important aim. Yet, historical experience suggests that concessions by Ukraine or its Western partners toward Russian revanchist aspirations in the Donbas may not help achieve it. On the contrary, Western softness, and Ukrainian weakness vis-à-vis the Kremlin will lead to further confrontation.
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    Domestic and International Dimensions of Ukraine's Decentralization: Kyiv's Local Governance Reform and Post-Soviet Democratization
    (2023) Romanova, Valentyna; Umland, Andreas
    This article examines Ukraine’s decentralization in 2014-21 in light of Russia’s initially hybrid war against Ukraine and the full-fledged military invasion since February 2022. While not a panacea for the social defects that have undermined Ukrainian political and economic development since independence, Ukraine’s local governance reform has improved the capacity of public authorities to deliver basic services; increased Ukraine’s cohesion and resilience; and supported the country’s ongoing Europeanization. Its cross-border diffusion potential makes the Ukrainian reform relevant for democratizing transitions in other states both within and beyond the post-communist space.
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    Geopolitical implications and challenges of the coronavirus crisis for Ukraine
    (2020) Klimkin, Pavlo; Umland, Andreas
    Among various geopolitical repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic are redefinitions of the short-term priorities of many international organizations. Among others, the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are becoming absorbed by new internal challenges, and are thus even less interested in further enlargement than before. Against this background, Kyiv, Tbilisi, and Chisinau, as well as their Western friends, need to seek new paths to increase the three countries’ security, resilience, and growth before their accession to the West’s major organizations. Above all, an alternative way to decrease Ukraine’s current institutional isolation is to develop more intense bilateral relations with friendly states across the globe, including Germany and the United States. In Eastern Europe, moreover, Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova should attempt to create new multilateral networks with post-communist member countries of NATO as well as the EU, and try to become part of such structures as the Three Seas Initiative or Bucharest Nine group.
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    Historical esotericism as a method of cognition. How russian pseudoscientists contributed to Moscow's anti-western turn
    (2023) Umland, Andreas
    A number of para-academic tendencies in Russian public science helped prepare for the war in Ukraine. In addition to the Kremlin's propaganda campaigns, the intellectual deformation of the Russian elite under the influence of Manichean ideas of theorists such as Lev Gumilev and Aleksander Dugin is partly responsible for the growing separation of Russia from Europe. Post-Soviet public discourse is infected with a multitude of speculative as well as often conspiracy theories and sometimes occult or racist ideas. Their proponents have displaced established social scientists and historians from intellectual and media debates. This parallel public discourse has evolved since the beginning of glasnost, 35 years ago, and was one of the factors that prepared Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2014.
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    What Moscow Has Taught to Non-Nuclear Weapon States
    (2023) Umland, Andreas; Essen, Hugo von
    In the early 1990s, newly independent Ukraine briefly possessed more nuclear warheads than China, France and Great Britain taken together. It had inherited from the USSR some 1,900 strategic and 2,500 tactical nuclear weapons. However, Kyiv decided, against the background of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, that Ukraine would become entirely free of nuclear weapons. To be sure, Ukraine was unable to use most of its nuclear weapons. Yet, the amount of warheads, specialized technology and engineering expertise it had accumulated in the Soviet period was such that it could have preserved a small amount of enriched uranium or/and plutonium, or even nuclear ammunition and warheads. Under considerable pressure not only from Moscow but also with the generous help from Washington, Kyiv transferred its Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) arsenal, however, completely and quickly to Russia. Ukraine signed and ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state.