The attack on Ukraine has had tragic consequences for all Ukrainians and many Russians. The horror of families being killed and divided is a spectacle that nearly all Europeans believed had been banished forever from our Continent. Even most of the attacking troops and the Ukrainian population refused to believe it might happen. But the…
Lately, I came across a very interesting article “The Roots of Russia”, written exactly sixty years ago by Dr. Lev Dobriansky (1918-2008), a renowned Professor of Economics at Georgetown University and former US Ambassador to The Bahamas[1]. Dobriansky’s article was re-published in January 1964, in An Cosantóir (The Defender), The Irish Defence Journal, courtesy of…
In the West, there are two different competing narratives about the war in Ukraine. The prevailing narrative is that it is a struggle between the “bad guys” and “good guys”. For many, Russia led by dictator Putin represents imperialism and is alone responsible for this unprovoked war, whereas Ukraine represents freedom and democracy as well…
The nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine’s words inspired Raphael Lemkin, the drafter of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “Burning books is not the same as burning bodies…but when one intervenes … against mass destruction of churches and books one arrives just in time to prevent the burning…
War undermines the lives, health, and safety of all human beings, but for approximately 2.7 million persons with disabilities and their families living in Ukraine, the situation is much worse. Although accurate statistics are hard to come by, many Ukrainians with a disability, especially those with the most severe conditions, have not been able to…
Western forecasters predicted that Russia’s economy would collapse after unprecedented sanctions were imposed on Moscow as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. However, the Russian statistics office (ROSSTAT), recently reported that the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first half of the year fell by only 0.4%. According to official data, capital expenditures…
The nuclear safety standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) do not contain guidance or recommendations in the context of warlike scenarios. Since the beginning of the war last February, several Ukrainian nuclear facilities have suffered or are suffering from the effects of military operations taking place in their vicinity. Such operations have taken…
Russia continues its offensive in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, while Ukraine intensifies its campaign to retake the occupied territories. Six months after the outbreak of the war, there is no end in sight for now. The war has displaced millions of people who even fled the country, shaken the existing international order, raised the spectre…
Georgios is co-founder and Executive Director of FOGGS with almost thirty years of work experience in international affairs, both as a practitioner and as a researcher. His experience includes fourteen years with the United Nations, with a wide range of assignments in many different parts of the world, from Haiti to South Africa, working on…
The pandemic crisis and the Russo-Ukrainian war have shown that European societies are extremely vulnerable. It is important to recognize this. Only in this way will the EU be able to introduce aimed at the sustainability of Europe integration and the resilience (that is, the capacity to absorb shocks and stress) of the European citizens,…
