Academy Of Ideas

The recent crisis in Ukraine has been widely portrayed in the West as a rerun of the Cold War, with a peaceful pro-EU Ukraine being pulled apart as the result of an aggressive and newly expansionist Russia seeking to re-establish hegemony over its neighbourhood. Russia’s annexing of the Ukrainian region of Crimea has been roundly condemned as violating international law, state sovereignty, democracy and causing the most serious crisis in European security since the end of the Cold War. The situation is complicated, however, by the close historic ties between Russia and Ukraine and the fact that many Russian-speaking Ukrainians want to maintain them, as well as the fact that Crimea was actually part of Russia within living memory. Significantly, however, in recent decades Russia has tended to cite the importance of national sovereignty in opposition to Western-led foreign interventions; this is the first time it has accepted the idea that sovereignty can be overridden by other concerns. So is this the beginnin