This essay is written to distance proper understanding of the Russian war against Ukraine from any false equivalence that this is a conflict between two belligerents, whose perspectives deserve equal recognition as a prelude to a negotiated outcome. Attempts to explore alternative avenues to peace, and identify differentiated messages and appropriate envoys and institutions should…
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…
Seventy-seven years ago today, on 6 August 1945, the United States Airforce dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, instantly killing an estimated 70,000 people – a number that would grow to about 140,000 over the coming year as radiation sickness took its toll. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki only three days later raised the total…
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,…
The war in Ukraine threw into stark relief the new patterns of geopolitics: On the one hand, there is the revived West, led by the USA, which began to wind down foreign military actions around 2010. On the other, there is certainly China, still without a strong international following, but making common cause with a…
The year of 2020 has ushered the start of a new era, one that many expected to be one of achievement, economic growth, and development on a global scale. However, today we can in fact say that this new era that began is being marked by political and economic crises and uncertainties. Since the COVID-19…
