Recent troubling revelations that UK diplomatic staff lobbied for abroad raise serious questions about Britain’s approach to tobacco control. The UK government is playing a double game, publicly committing to snuff out smoking while continuing to support British tobacco manufacturers in their overseas business ventures behind the scenes. If this blatant hypocrisy continues, a smoke-free world may be a long way away.

For years, the UK has made a show of promoting anti-tobacco measures. The country ratified the World Health Organization (WHO)�� (FCTC), which sets out specific measures like banning tobacco advertising and requiring health warnings for packaging, in December 2004. It a program helping developing countries implement the FCTC and will a working group in March on successfully enforcing the convention. Smoking in indoor public places has been in the UK since 2007. In July 2017, the government unveiled various additional measures to create Britain’s first “,” from mandating plain packaging to imposing high taxes on tobacco.

At the same time, members of the UK government tend to get a little too cosy with Big Tobacco. Recently sacked international development secretary lobbied for British American Tobacco (BAT) before becoming an MP, advising the tobacco giant on how to influence the Conservative Party and MEPs against the European Union’s tobacco directive. Longstanding MP and former health secretary earns more than £100,000 a year as a director of BAT. British MPs’ pension fund’s single largest is BAT, and MPs held a variety of for tobacco titans, including in parliamentary dining rooms.

While it is true that these were actions of individual politicians, recent revelations that the UK has been complicit in BAT’s extensive overseas lobbying efforts expose the full extent of the government’s irresponsible duplicity. Reports demonstrate that UK policymakers displayed a consistent willingness to turn a blind eye to a disquieting pattern of misbehaviour in both the Foreign Office and the Department for International Trade.

In 2012, the released a letter sent by the British ambassador to the Panamanian trade minister that both UK diplomatic guidelines and FCTC Article 5.3 requiring governments to protect their public health policies from the tobacco industry’s commercial interests. It parroted common tobacco industry arguments and complained about the trouble that tax increases had caused for BAT, which the ambassador identified as “one of the most important British companies.”

In response to this incident, the Foreign Office released new for embassy staff, which were quickly violated as well. The sat next to BAT’s head of international trade and fiscal affairs at a March 2015 meeting exhorting the Pakistani finance minister to abandon pictorial health warnings on cigarette packages. That same month, UK government trade adviser was to BAT’s offices in Budapest, while the British ambassador to Hungary conveyed BAT’s concerns to several Hungarian ministers. Another senior British diplomat the Bangladeshi government to settle a tax dispute with BAT out of court in 2017.

Similar contacts are known to have taken place in Venezuela, Poland and Laos over the years, but it seems likely that UK diplomats promoted BAT’s interest in other countries where it carries out extensive operations. Particular candidates are and , where the UK is among the largest foreign investors and where BAT allegedly to secure favourable regulation. The message that the UK government sends with this two-faced attitude is that British companies’ profits are more important than lives in developing countries.

This latest illustration of how deeply BAT’s interests have penetrated the British government comes as BAT and its peers to influence another policy area: the European Commission’s proposed track and trace legislation. The system advanced in December would fight the widespread by marking each tobacco packet with a generated by an independent third party. It is a significant improvement over bilateral anti-smuggling deals with Big Tobacco companies that it replaces, which had a warning from the FCTC secretariat.

Serious concerns remain, however, that the current draft leaves room for industry interference. One major point of contention is what constitutes an independent third party. Commission proposals would consider a company that receives less than 20% of its income from the tobacco industry as “.” This might provide industry-supported systems like , developed and patented by tobacco giant Philip Morris before being suspiciously , with a back door.

The fervency with which the tobacco industry is lobbying for Codentify should raise more than a few red flags. Big Tobacco continues to pull out all the stops to push this system, from making a to Interpol to securing their support for Codentify to joining forces and ensuring that the system they control is implemented, contrary to WHO guidelines.

It’s not too hard to imagine why the tobacco industry so desperately wants to be in charge of the labelling system. BAT was as recently as 2014 for deliberately oversupplying certain markets to evade tax. The company is complicit in cigarette smuggling on such a massive scale that it has developed a whole of euphemisms for internal memos: illicit cigarettes were referred to, for example, as “general trade.” Clearly, involving the tobacco industry to any degree in the EU’s efforts to cut down on tobacco smuggling could be catastrophic. With all the revelations unearthed by the BBC or Reuters of Big Tobacco’s efforts to undermine the WHO protocol, one can easily imagine the opposition to any independent track and trace system.

These dirty tricks and relentless attempts to subvert critical legislation underscore how shameful it is for the UK government to be promoting Big Tobacco’s agenda overseas. As , CEO of UK health charity Ash, noted: “The word hypocrisy hardly does it justice. We are saving lives at home and promoting death abroad.” It’s long past time for the government to put its money where its mouth is and cut all ties with this harmful and dishonest industry.

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Kazakhstan and the European Union are celebrating a that was sealed in December 2017, with an “” of Parliament members voting to pursue the bloc’s first such deal with a Central Asian country. Before popping open the locally-sourced champagne, however, the EU should take a moment and consider this not as an opportunity to lean back, but to push its easterly neighbour harder on human rights, the rule of law and improving the country’s stagnant business environment for the European companies that Kazakh leaders hope to lure to their market.

The Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (EPCA) is a charter described as “WTO plus” because it reiterates World Trade Organization provisions (in order to cement them) while taking on other barriers to trade. The EU’s partnership agreements come with a variety of labels; a similar deal with Armenia, for example, is called the (CEPA). The choice of adjectives may vary, but all generally seek to upgrade trade ties while simultaneously enhancing political dialogue and holding the partner country accountable to international frameworks. The EPCA with Kazakhstan sticks to these priorities and attempts to respond to civil society concerns by placing strong emphasis on rights issues.

Unfortunately, translating those words into action might be more complicated than the EU thinks. Finnish echoed concerns shared by NGOs and other lawmakers during the debate over final ratification of the EPCA. She declared that “economic interests cannot take precedence over human rights” at the tabling of the bill, but it remains unclear whether even those economic objectives will prove within reach. For one thing, implementing and enforcing the deal’s provisions means facing numerous challenges posed by corruption and the post-Soviet state’s overall business climate.

As is often the case in former communist countries, . In such a murky environment, extending more economic opportunities to Kazakh companies could just end up bankrolling the ruling class, making investing in Kazakhstan a risky business. While the ��index places Kazakhstan 36��in the world — a compared to two years prior��— corruption remains rife. Transparency International rates the country in its lowest quartile, sandwiched between Iran and Russia.

Many of these issues stem from the way the economy is structured. The vast majority of the country’s state-owned firms remain government-controlled, with no progress on promises to privatize behemoths such as the KazMunaiGaz oil and gas firm. Even when outside companies are allowed into the market, they face obstacles to putting down long-term roots in the market.

This holds doubly true for investors in the country’s strategic electricity sector. Astana bluntly told , a US company with 20 years of experience operating in Kazakhstan, that its concession of two hydropower plants the American firm had been operating and improving since the 1990s would be terminated. Adding insult to injury, the Kazakh government then decided to ignore the terms of its initial contract with AES, which provided for compensations in case of termination. Instead of the nearly $90 million it is owed, Kazakh officials offered the American company $1 and demanded an immediate transfer of ownership.

A similar fate befell the , which saw its licenses for oil and gas extraction annulled by Kazakhstan’s courts and transferred to a Kazakh company controlled by obscure shareholders. Liman Caspian’s ordeal helps demonstrate the difficulties faced by outside companies in dealing with the Kazakh judiciary and in seeking redress for unfair treatment.

In its defence, the Kazakh government is cognizant of at least some of these problems. Astana has��made an effort��to , attract investors and diversify the economy. Following the 2015 collapse of world oil prices, for instance, the Kazakh government announced a privatization drive that sought to reduce state ownership of the national economy from more than 40% to less than 15% — the standard used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Speaking at the last month, Prime Minister Bakhytzhan Sagintayev promised the government would be prioritizing transparency, the rule of law and the protection of property in 2018. Those remarks came just days before the European Parliament voted for the EPCA.

The MEPs who overwhelmingly voted for the new partnership agreement need to make sure their deal with Astana turns these talking points into concrete policy results on the ground. A freer, more transparent economy based on good governance as opposed to venal interests will be important to addressing many of their other concerns regarding Kazakhstan. Europe’s voice should be loud, but it does not need to be solitary. With , now would be a good time for his American interlocutors to drive home the same message.

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In a long-awaited paper, the United Kingdom has finally articulated its strategy for future security cooperation with post-Brexit Europe. The new ��calls for a comprehensive framework for cooperation between the various European law enforcement agencies and the UK in order to tackle common threats such as terrorism. While Prime Minister Theresa May originally sought freedom from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over British law by abandoning membership of a major European law enforcement instrument, the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), she now seems to have realized that it is impossible to escape the court’s influence without fundamentally damaging the UK’s safety.

will no doubt rail against the shift, but May has made the right call: Cross-border threats necessitate cross-border cooperation. This is not a time to be walking away from ambitious models of alignment, lest we dare dangle our toes over the cliff’s edge.

In fact, government officials have long been insistent that remaining a part of the EAW is crucial to the success of law enforcement and justice in the UK and Europe. Home Secretary Amber Rudd earlier this year described the mechanism as “” for ensuring justice, whereby suspects are arrested and speedily transferred across EU member states in order to be brought to trial. Since the EAW came into effect in 2004, over 8,000 criminals have been sent from the UK to other European Union countries. In 2014, May herself asserted against rebel Conservative Party members that abandoning the framework would make the UK a “” for criminals seeking to evade European rule of law.

The ever so fervent EAW critics, however, do not tire of pointing out the mechanism’s flaws by singling out specific cases to support their war cry. They often point to the case of Romanian businessman Alexander Adamescu as proof of how the mechanism’s supposed overreach is undermining Britain’s body of law. The Romanian Anti-Corruption Agency (DNA) issued an EAW for Adamescu for his role in bribing Romanian judges in order to escape fraud charges. Adamescu fled to London in the aftermath, where his , insisting on his innocence by portraying him as a playwright in exile, while leaving out the facts surrounding his almost $1-billion fortune.

Even so, many have pointed out that without the EAW, the UK will become the new “;” total and undiscerning judicial independence will only serve to make Britain a favorite safe haven for Europe’s corrupt, with the Adamescu case a forerunner of this potential trend. Whitehall’s new partnership paper reflects this concern. It suggests that a should be built on “what has already been achieved through decades of collaboration, integrated working, and joint systems and procedures.” This formulation may have been an attempt to obscure the intent to retain the EAW amid protest from anti-EAW Brexiters, after ��in August. Half a year after May sought to reassure Brexiters in her by declaring that she would “take back control of our laws,” May was now forced to admit that even after March 2019.

In reality, Britain never had a realistic choice when it comes to retaining or abandoning the EAW. No matter how much some members of the Conservative Party may rail against the EAW or the ECJ, the alternative would be a patchwork of cooperation agreements akin to what the EU has established with third-party countries — an arrangement altogether insufficient in the face of .

Though there have been proposals to negotiate a replacement to the EAW, these pitches are little more than pipe dreams. Their proponents are adamant that many of the standards placed on signatories of the EAW are already met through , and therefore do not require much negotiating. However, as a report conducted by the warned, any operational gap between the EAW ceasing to apply after Brexit and a replacement to become operational would pose unacceptable risks. Looking at , London is more likely to face a serious judicial cliff edge rather than a functional extradition treaty come Brexit day.

The security implications would be immense. The 2005 , was extradited to the UK under the EAW mechanism, a move that would become nearly impossible if May were to abide by a select few Tories. Time and time again, the EAW has ensured for crimes perpetrated against them abroad: Thomas Kearney, extradited from Ireland after stabbing a London man 54 times in 2012; Stephen Burnell, returned to a British prison from Crete on charges of sexual offences against a 9-year-old girl; Gilles Poelvoorde from Belgium, after hacking £229 million ($307 million) from a London bank.

At the same time, leaving the EAW would make it difficult to expel wanted foreign criminals from the country. that 45 alleged killers and 35 men wanted for rape were among 1,423 suspects detained in London since April 2009 before being sent to European countries. Drug traffickers and suspected terrorists are also facing prosecution abroad thanks to the fast-track system.

Far from being a decider of guilt, the EAW is ambitious in its streamlining of law enforcement processes between EU countries. Cries of judicial independence are a grotesquely insufficient defence given the reality of its effectiveness, and May has done the UK a favor when she compromised under EU pressure this week to ensure a win-win for European and British courts alike. Only criminals with deep pockets would profit from the type of hard-Brexit dystopia that backbench Tories would have embraced. Without intentional cooperation with our neighbours on the continent, post-Brexit Britain will surely flounder.

*[This article was updated on September 30, 2017.]

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If the results of the British general election revived hope of mitigating Brexit, the long-awaited Queen’s Speech in Parliament has seemingly put��. In the speech her government penned for the queen, Prime Minister Theresa May decided to stick to her hard Brexit guns: a Great Repeal Bill, an independent customs regime and trade policy, and an end to freedom of movement for the European Union.

The content of the speech will only feed Brussels’ view that the United Kingdom has been behaving like the worst of the boozy holidaymakers it sends to European shores each summer:����yet increasingly aggressive. That hasn’t changed, even after May’s decision to call a general election that cost the “Brexit Department”��.

The timing to take this strong of a stance could have been better, to say the least. Just a few days before, British and EU negotiators David Davis and Michel Barnier finally sat down to determine a��.

The Queen’s Speech may have been heavy on tough talk, but it does not change the fact that the UK’s position at the negotiating table has been weakened. As talks get underway, though, that slightly humbled position might actually be an opportunity for both sides. A hard Brexit is no more����now than it was before the speech. With her leadership in doubt, May needs to drop the combative approach and focus on finding mutually beneficial compromises on critical issues.

Fortunately, the speech still left some windows open for a better Brexit strategy.

Accepting a transitional period

The remarks prepared for the queen clearly rule out permanent membership in the European customs union, but they do not rule out Chancellor Philip Hammond’s proposition that Britain hold off dismantling its customs arrangement with Europe until the UK has reached a����with Brussels — a process that could take several years. This is an option favored by British businesses and the EU itself. Maintaining the customs union for longer than currently anticipated would confer several benefits, such as allowing the UK to court potential trade partners while giving trade negotiators the time they desperately need to work out particulars.

As Hammond said himself: “If we’re restricted on being able to enter into new free-trade deals with third countries during an interim period that won’t stop us negotiating and preparing. Normally these deals take quite a long time to negotiate.”

It would also preserve the headway Whitehall has already made, with members of the����(GCC) in particular. Deepening trade and investment relations with GCC countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has been a major focus for the government, with a series of high-level visits by Hammond, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and May herself in the past six months. Tellingly, the prime minister’s first overseas trip after invoking Article 50 was to Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest trade partner in the Middle East.

Arab regional leaders are����to boost foreign trade ties with the UK in the midst of their own economic reform programs, and a transitional period prior wouldn’t hurt these envisaged deals, but it would take much of the chaos out of Brexit.

Compromise on free movement

As the issue that most drives anti-EU sentiment in Britain, freedom of movement is one of the thorniest subjects the negotiators will have to tackle. In the words of James McGrory, executive director of Open Britain, the UK needs to����“not to pursue a Brexit deal that we know will make people worse off and sacrifice our economic prosperity on the altar of immigration control.”

A report by two think tanks, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, has����any deal ensure employers retain access to both skilled and unskilled workers from the EU. This is hardly a grudging concession to the union. If the UK doesn’t soften its stance, businesses could quickly run into a lack of skilled personnel but also people willing to fill low-skill positions.

The Queen’s Speech made quite clear that the government would be establishing “new national policies on immigration,” but it did not say what those policies would be.��

Reject the “no deal” scenario

“No deal is better than a bad deal” makes for a good sound bite, but it would be terrible policy. This holds its own strong interest in ensuring an orderly withdrawal. The reality of the situation was best summed up by European Council President��: “There is nothing to win in this process, and I am talking about both sides. In essence, this is about damage control.”

There will be no controlling of the damage if either side flounces away from the negotiating table with nothing resolved. Instead, it will take sensibly and fairly unpicking the myriad issues that the UK’s exit brings in its wake to prevent harmful destabilization at the precise time Europe gets its feet��.����

Widen the debate in Britain

If “the will of the people” is truly at the heart of Brexit, the people made their preferences abundantly clear in the general election. In both the election and in recent polling, the British public has rejected the idea of cutting all ties with the EU. The majority of Britons — 69% —����with the idea of a hard Brexit, while another 53% think there should be another referendum.

Theresa May would do well to remember that the fierce divisions within her own party over the referendum and the negotiations do not necessarily reflect the public as a whole.

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Between Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s push for the £100-million��, the current government’s “” narrative and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to put the economy on a nationalized train , nostalgia seems to be writing the script of British political life. Unfortunately, Britain’s trend of going back to the future does not stop at the gates of Westminster. As one unfortunate Cambridge historian has found out, the unsettling paranoia that Russians in the West are all spies among us has made an unsettling comeback.

The historian in question is Svetlana Lokhova, whose story is a disturbing exemplar of how tensions between Russia and the West are impacting the lives of average Russians living and working in the United Kingdom, Europe or the United States.

Because of brief interactions with former White House within the context of her work as an academic, Lokhova has been caught up in the scandal surrounding President Donald Trump’s entourage and the extent of its involvement with Kremlin machinations. Ironically, it was her expertise in Russian spy rings that cast her into the path of the disgraced American general. She is accused of somehow using that date back to Joseph Stalin in 1912 to recruit him at a dinner following a talk at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, perhaps the world’s premier academic forum on the Western spy world.

Accused of being a Russian operative, Lokhova has seen her world turned upside down. There is of course no proof of her involvement in any sort of Russian espionage, but she’s already been forced to move home in an attempt to shake off media attention. Some of the most sensationalist coverage, fed by conspiratorial thinking among certain anti-Trump segments of the blogosphere, has even portrayed her as a “honeytrap” — presumably because there is no other reason for a Russian woman to be at the University of Cambridge.

Lokhova is understandably scathing in how she reacts to this portrayal of the encounter unfolded. As she : “If I did recruit Flynn that would have been one of the greatest —��if not the greatest — Russian coup of all times. So it is utterly ridiculous, totally unbelievable. But, for some reason, the world today is such that people buy it.”

The general atmosphere of fear and suspicion has turned Lokhova into collateral damage, but she is not the only Russian caught up in America’s growing scandal through no apparent fault of their own. In comparison with Lokhova, though, some of the other victims have considerably more resources at their disposal when it comes to defending themselves. One prominent example is Oleg Deripaska, aluminium magnate and owner of UC Rusal.

Two months ago, the Associated Press alleged to work on behalf of Russian government interests. The businessman has not taken these accusations lying down. On May 15, he officially against the AP in US courts. In weeks prior, he placed in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to refute what he described as a campaign of character assassination and demand the news organization provide evidence of the work it claims Manafort performed (which, for the record, it has not). To reinforce just how serious he was being, Deripaska offered to testify before the US Congress to clear his reputation.

If the aluminium tycoon does make the trip to Washington, he may not be alone. Eugene Kapersky, founder of global cybersecurity firm Kapersky Labs, has also had to refute allegations as the FBI investigates whether his firm “maintains any troubling relationships with the Russian government.” said on May 11 they would not be comfortable having Kapersky software installed on their computers. Kaspersky hit back with his own offer to testify, although not without taking the opportunity to generate some free publicity. Responding in the middle of a , he wrote: “I’m very sorry these gentlemen can’t use the best software on the market because of political reasons.”

Of course, Deripaska and Kaspersky both live in Russia. As a British citizen living in the UK, Lokhova is a more representative example of what exactly Russian expats can find themselves facing in the current climate. The irony is that many of them do not necessarily support President Vladimir Putin. Many of the in the US voted for Trump in the hope of preventing “socialist values that made them flee the Soviet republics.” Evgeny Finkel, a political science professor at the Columbia College of Arts and Sciences, argues that while his politics may be different, Putin’s regime still carries the taint of Soviet ideology.

This is the catch-22 that any Russian who maintains ties to the old country needs to fear. Whether they left to escape Russian domestic politics or simply prefer the way they are able to live their lives elsewhere, simply being Russian is now seen as worthy of suspicion. Whatever really happened between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government in 2016 will likely take years to establish for certain, but as speculation swirls, innocent people are almost certainly getting caught up in the crossfire.

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In what has become an all-too-common pattern, Russian authorities have once again����the only viable candidate who might have stood a chance against President Vladimir Putin come the 2018 elections. Much to the bitter disappointment of Western observers, Alexei Navalny, the popular anti-corruption campaigner and dogged critic of Putin and his entourage, was found guilty of embezzlement and handed a five-year suspended sentence.

On February 8, a Russian district court in Kirov, 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow,����Navalny guilty of defrauding a state timber company. In addition to a suspended sentence, the court handed him a fine of 500,000 rubles ($8,700).

The decision has been a long time coming, as Navalny was originally convicted in 2013. Then, the judge ordered his immediate imprisonment, but reversed the decision and released him pending appeal after rioting broke out in the streets of Moscow. Navalny later wrote in a statement that the suspension was “an admission that in fact there was no crime committed … But it keeps a politician who has now gained national notoriety on the hook, with the chance he could be sent to jail at any moment.”

Observers also noted that by temporarily allowing Navalny to continue his anti-Putin political activities, the Kremlin got to cover itself with the thin veneer of legitimacy that tolerating opposition parties confers.

Such magnanimity didn’t last for long, however. In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) made a pronouncement on the original decision. It ruled that Navalny had been denied the right to a fair trial and ordered that he be paid €63,000 in damages and legal fees. In November, the Russian Supreme Court overturned the decision following the ECHR ruling, only to send the case back to the district court of Kirov—for a pronouncement that was an almost word-for-word repeat of the 2013 decision.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that the district court’s decision comes little more than a month after Navalny announced his intention to run for president in 2018. As a result, the ruling is nothing more than a barely-disguised effort by the Kremlin to eliminate Putin’s only credible opponent before the election. Russian law forbids anyone convicted of a crime from running for office. While Navalny has����to continue his campaign, it remains to be seen whether the Kremlin will look kindly on his defiance as the race ramps up over the next 12 months.

Many observers have already begun to wring their hands over the Russian government’s efforts to sideline Navalny. After all, he has been the most prominent member of the Russian opposition landscape for nearly a decade.

A lawyer and anti-corruption activist, he first����to the scene nearly 10 years ago, when he started to blog about alleged misdeeds at state-owned companies. He was the instigating force behind large street protests in 2011, when he led thousands of demonstrators to condemn the victors in the latest parliamentary elections as a “party of crooks and thieves.” Since then, he has been a constant thorn in the side of the Kremlin, demanding free elections and exposing corruption and hypocrisy at the highest levels of the establishment.

Despite Navalny’s anti-corruption platform, though, his movement is not nearly as untarnished as it might seem. For instance, he has been����with Russian nationalists and has made a series of inflammatory statements that raise serious questions about his ability to govern. He has����in an annual march that brings together numerous Russian nationalist groups and has called for the deportation of illegal immigrants. He’s backed Stop Feeding the Caucasus, a campaign that aims to end federal subsidies to the “corrupt” governments of Chechnya and its neighbors. Navalny also supported the Russian war against Georgia in 2008, demanding that all Georgians be kicked out of Russia, using a racial epithet to describe them in the process.

However, Navalny has rejected claims that his “nationalist,” anti-immigrant agenda would stoke neo-Nazi tendencies in Russia. Instead, he has called for an open discussion of issues such as illegal immigration, “ethnic” organized crime groups and crime in the North Caucasus.

TRUMP AND PUTIN

Navalny’s sentence couldn’t have come at a worse time. With populist movements gaining power at a frightening pace—from the United States to Britain and continental Europe—outrage over Russia’s actions was muted.

After all, just look at the Trump administration’s reaction—or lack thereof—to the����of another, less prominent Russian opposition activist, Vladimir Kara-Murza.��Days before the court ruled on Navalny’s case, Kara-Murza was taken to a hospital in Moscow, where he was treated for his second alleged poisoning in two years. It is widely suspected that he was targeted in retribution for his political activism.

In response, several US lawmakers have voiced their support for Kara-Murza’s predicament. Last week, for instance, the ranking and minority members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called on the newly minted secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, to “pay close attention to Vladimir Kara-Murza and other Kremlin opponents” as they formulate the administration’s Russia policy. The executive branch, however, has remained notably mom on the matter.

Given President Donald Trump’s well-publicized cozying up to Putin, however, and his recent����to qualify his Russian counterpart as a “killer,” it looks like Moscow will be able to continue sidelining the opposition with ever-growing impunity in the coming years.

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In her long-awaited speech on January 17, British Prime Minister Theresa May finally clarified the phrase��“Brexit means Brexit.” Despite previous assurances that the Conservative government would pursue “a mature cooperative relationship with the EU [European Union],”�� now unequivocally point toward a “hard Brexit” that will see the United Kingdom opt out of free movement of people, leave the single market and seek a new arrangement for the customs union. In doing so, May is not just jeopardizing Britain’s economic prosperity. She is also betraying the silent majority that most definitely did not vote for this kind of extreme rupture.

In the referendum’s aftermath, a narrow victory for the Leave campaign has somehow been recast as a clear, unambiguous demand from the British people for slash-and-burn Brexit that will see us cut off from Europe entirely. Regardless of the how the government or the tabloids try to rewrite the events of 2016, the Leave campaign was a broad coalition: It comprised the anti-immigrant disciples of Nigel Farage but also free-trade enthusiasts like Boris Johnson and Daniel Hannan. The latter on multiple occasions that “absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” What a difference seven months make.

Considering she herself opposed leaving Europe, May could have compellingly argued for a moderate, low-impact separation to minimize some of the wounds the polarizing campaign inflicted on the country. Instead, she has launched the country hurtling down the path hawked by Farage and his ilk. Needless to say, this is not the mandate the British public gave her government in June 2016.

May’s Gamble

How could this happen? May’s gamble has less to do with a calculated view of what is best for Britain and more to do with appeasing the Conservative and United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) hardliners who this approach. This is becoming a trend in the party: Just as former British Prime Minister�� into holding the referendum in the first place, to the same forces. Even better, these forces are now bolstered by yet another extremist from across the Atlantic: US President Donald Trump.

May’s grand plan to make Britain the “biggest global advocate for free trade” seems to rely almost exclusively on Trump’s promise that a UK-US free trade agreement will be struck in double quick time, and on January 27 will feature the proposition high on her agenda. The tenor coming from Trump’s camp is that this can be achieved��,��and Brexiteers like Boris Johnson trumpeted the “” that legislators in Washington supposedly feel toward the UK. The man who traveled to Trump Tower to obtain these choice quotes from the Donald was none other than .

High Hopes

This sudden move to pin all of the UK’s hopes on America’s mercurial strongman ignores the fact nothing is stopping Britain from opting for a European Free Trade Agreement-like arrangement with the EU, which would secure access to the single market while also allowing London to pursue trade deals with other countries. In economic terms, that type of pragmatic approach would be far better for the British economy than amputating ourselves from our most important trading partners, empowering Downing Street to pursue new markets while maintaining the solid foundation Europe has given us for decades. It could also save Britain the headache of renegotiating the World Trade Organization (WTO) regimes and to all 162 WTO members for approval.

Nor is this just wishful thinking. As it happens, May’s campaign to pitch Britain abroad has actually been going rather well. Liam Fox’s post-referendum assertions that the UK had , including with China and Japan, but also with Commonwealth nations has started to pan out: a joint has already been established with Australia to broker an agreement as quickly as possible. Australia’s former prime minister, Tony Abbott, even suggested a between the countries.

That trend has been reinforced by the positive reception May received on a visit to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in December 2016, where she promoted Britain’s economic links to the Arabian Peninsula. That trip represents her most successful diplomatic sortie to date, as Britain’s push for trade coincides with market reforms in Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest economy.

The Saudis are keen to court British investment and advice within the framework of their plan, and the country’s program to away from oil is designed to open the country to new opportunities. May used her trip to extend the good relations the Gulf states established with ��and used her speech to point to the Saudi plans in particular as one area where she saw a major British role. Whether the Persian Gulf monarchies would pull back from the UK was a major question after the referendum, and the response thus far seems to be no.

Unfortunately, the US-UK trade pact Trump is promising Downing Street is far less likely to turn out as well as these other overtures. Lest we forget, Trump’s entire policy platform is built on ideas of protectionism and, notably, the mantra that free trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are “” the United States. He has consistently promised voters that he would revive American manufacturing by declaring war on global commerce.

Telling Michael Gove he loves Britain is one thing; telling his anti-trade, populist base that he wants to negotiate and sign one of the trade deals he just spent 18��months maligning, having just , is quite another. Then again, it would hardly be the first time the new president has reversed himself without missing a beat. Our prime minister may think she has found the answer to her problems in Trump, but does she really know what she’s getting herself into?

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On December 12, Russian Foreign Minister was in Serbia with an invidious task to fulfil: convince Belgrade that Russia wants closer cooperation between the two countries while denying allegations it launched a coup attempt against neighboring Montenegro from Serbian soil. Ostensibly there to attend a meeting of Black Sea foreign ministers, Lavrov’s arrival comes just weeks after Serbia reportedly expelled several Russian citizens for their part in attempting to overthrow the Montenegrin government last October.

But a closer look at the allegations reveals a startling fact: that in its quest to counter Russia by sanctifying a host of what appear to be anti-Russian figures, the European Union (EU) has gone astray—and not just in Montenegro.

Was There a Coup?

The circumstances surrounding the remain murky—murky enough for some commentators to argue that the entire plot, for which 20 Serbian paramilitaries and two Russian nationalists were arrested, was actually a false flag operation cooked up by the former Montenegrin prime minister to bolster his party’s support. That observers are left pondering which outlandish conspiracy theory is actually true tells us a lot about how careful the EU needs to be when it comes to distinguishing the good guys from the bad on its periphery.

, the pro-NATO Montenegrin prime minister who stepped down after his party won the election in October, and whom the alleged coup was supposed to overthrow, has a long history of painting his opposition as Russian fifth columns in the Adriatic state. Prior to stepping down, Djukanovic had served as either president or prime minister of Montenegro almost without interruption since 1991. Over that time, he has profited politically by portraying the country as ever on the verge of being overrun by Moscow, and therefore in need of EU and NATO��membership. He has also by letting Montenegro be overrun by international crime gangs.

Citing the need for a return to calm after the events on election day as his reason for stepping down, critics point instead to the widespread allegations of electoral abuses and Djukanovic’s desire not to push his luck with the EU too far. It’s not even the first time a supposed election-day “coup attempt” has been foiled by Djukanovic. In the , an Albanian “terrorist cell” was raided before it could carry out a planned attack on Montenegrin politicians. All charges were later dropped against the alleged conspirators, and Djukanovic was awarded a prize for the peaceful passage of the elections.

Unsurprisingly, Djukanovic’s opponents aren’t any more convinced by stories of external terrorist threats to Montenegro’s elections today than they were 10��years ago.

Darling of Democracy

The now-former premier is not the only figure whose glaring faults the West is willing to ignore if it means gaining another ally against Russia. Since his release from prison after a 10-year sentence for corruption, has emerged as one of the loudest voices standing up to Vladimir Putin and advocating for change in Russia.

In a string of recent , Khodorkovsky called on the West and . Khodorkovsky, the founder of oil company Yukos, rose to fame due to the lengthy international legal proceedings revolving around the way the company was allegedly expropriated by the Russian state. In 2014, he secured a $50-billion award, which was overturned earlier this year by a Dutch court.

Khodorkovsky’s crusade suffered another defeat in late November, after a Paris court decided to unfreeze several Russian assets that had been by Yukos shareholders. Moscow has maintained that because the , the case should have been heard in a Russian court. For their part, Khodorkovsky and the claimants distrusted the Russian justice system, which they held responsible for the bankruptcy of Yukos.

Despite making his fortune as one of post-communist Russia’s richest men as chairman of Yukos—Russia’s largest oil company in the early 2000s—Khodorkovsky reinvented himself as the darling of democracy advocates after he was imprisoned and the company’s assets were seized. However, by bestowing men like Khodorkovsky with unquestioning approval, critics of the Kremlin’s abuses are sadly weakening their own arguments. Few seem to remember that in the late 1990s, Khodorkovsky was viewed as one of Russia’s most ruthless profiteers.

Indeed, the story of how the former oligarch acquired his wealth would, under other circumstances, scandalize Western publics. When Boris Yeltsin’s government sold off the multibillion-dollar oil company Yukos in 1995, Khodorkovsky picked it up for a fraction of the cost and managed it until his arrest on fraud and tax evasion charges in 2003. During��that time, he built a complicated that allowed him to escape taxes while his chief of security was implicated in the 1998 murder of , who angered Yukos by leading a protest that interfered with a shareholder meeting.

Khodorkovsky’s offshore activities prompted the largest money-laundering investigation in US history, with the government pursuing allegations Khodorkovsky’s companies illegally moved between through the Bank of New York.

Nearly two decades later, Khodorkovsky has transformed his international profile into that of an admirable dissident. His image inside Russia, though, is not nearly as positive.

When it comes to Europe’s dealings with an antagonist like Russia, there is a strong temptation to weigh individuals according to their putative pro- or anti-Moscow credentials. From Djukanovic’s organized-crime activities at the expense of Montenegro’s impoverished population to Khodorkovsky’s nebulous rise to wealth, this strategy has left the European Union vulnerable to embarrassing contradictions. While Russia should be called out and held accountable for its human rights abuses and aggressive foreign policy, the EU should at least make sure its champions are at least worthy to cast the first stone.

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In 2000, Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin signed a deal calling on both countries to reduce their stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium. The deal, called the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA), was the hallmark of an era when both countries were committed to healing the deep wounds left by the Cold War.

Earlier this month, following two years of conflict and disagreements that shook US-Russia relations, with America.��In a��statement on October 3, President Putin said the decision stemmed from “the emergence of a threat to strategic stability and as a result of unfriendly actions by the United States of America towards the Russian Federation”—a reference to the uproar caused by Russia’s continued bombing of civilians in Aleppo.

Ostensibly, the reason the PMDA was scuttled is because��President Barack Obama recently ��that was used to render plutonium unusable. Instead of irradiating the plutonium and transforming it into mixed-oxide (MOX) in a special facility that is currently under construction in South Carolina, the administration switched to something called “immobilization” by which the material is mixed with radioactive waste that renders it unusable in bombs.

Different Era

The PMDA, which was renewed in 2009 when��Hillary Clinton served as US secretary of state, was the product of a very different era of diplomacy between the two countries. Today, against the backdrop of two proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria, Putin is manufacturing technical explanations to fault the United States for not living up to its end of the deal. And while Ukraine has simmered down in recent months, and is more and more resembling one of the many frozen conflicts found on the Russian periphery, the war in Syria has brought bilateral relations to arguably their lowest point since the Cold War.

The breakdown in relations is especially frightening in terms of the downturn in nuclear cooperation. Efforts such as the were essential to disarmament after the collapse of the Soviet Union. US-Russia cooperation from Soviet nuclear weapons, which were then purchased by the US for use as reactor fuel. Some 900 ��and 7,600 warheads were deactivated. Weapons scientists were placed in stable jobs with salaries generous enough to discourage the sharing of their knowledge with rogue states or terrorists. While this entente ensured a reduction of risks after the Cold War and was an unabashed success for more than a decade, the architecture starting crashing down in the early 2010s.

Suspicious of American nuclear inspectors, Russia decided to depart��from practically all bilateral nuclear security cooperation mechanisms, even refusing to participate in this year’s biennial Nuclear Security Summit. This was a turning point in relations, especially since both sides had agreed to always cooperate in matters of counterterrorism and nonproliferation, which were long seen as issues of the utmost importance.

Even if Moscow and Washington held throughout the past two decades different views over the nuclear programs in Tehran, Pyongyang or Tel Aviv, they were still dedicated to working together. And now, by pulling out of the 2000 PSMA, Putin is essentially in Syria and Ukraine, with grievances regarding the US handling of its��own side of the plutonium deal.

Decline in Cooperation

The decline in cooperation between Russia and the West comes with serious consequences in the civilian sector as well. Projects undertaken by Russian state-owned atomic energy company Rosatom have been accused of . Nuclear power plants such as the Ostrovets reactor in Belarus may live up to local safety standards, but not to . Ostrovets, which is just a one hour drive from Lithuanian capital Vilnius, has seen , including a and an explosion of an oxygen gas tank, which killed a worker.

The fact that Belarus is using a new, untested reactor and has repeatedly stonewalled European demands for nuclear inspections is not reassuring either. Similarly, Rosatom is also building a reactor in southern Turkey, at Akkuyu, and this project has also been and a lack of independent oversight.

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Getting the two powers to talk to each other will not be an easy feat, especially after leaders such as US Secretary of State John Kerry and French President Francois Hollande have called on Russia to be brought before an international tribunal for .

And Moscow isn’t backing down either. In the same press release that announced the termination of the PMDA, the Kremlin put forward a laundry list of demands for its resumption of nuclear cooperation. Russia is demanding a rollback of sanctions, compensation for economic damage incurred, reductions of US military presence in certain areas, and the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. This act, instituted in 2012, allows Americans to freeze the assets of Russian officials suspected of involvement in human rights violations.

These events all cast a shadow over President Obama’s initiative to rid the world of nuclear weapons, . Since then, his own administration has indicated that $1 trillion would be spent over the next decades, not on eradicating nuclear weapons, but on . The issue of following through on this vision of a nuclear-free world has scarcely been mentioned in the current presidential campaign, and is�� with North Korea, violent instability in the Middle East and the diplomatic conflicts with Russia.

The significance of the breakdown in nuclear cooperation cannot be overstated. These bilateral security agreements were one of the great successes of the end of the Cold War. Now, the ideal of a world without nuclear weapons seems as far removed as during the 1980s.

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While outside media coverage of Greece this summer has focused on the migrants stranded at the gates of Europe, the far-left Syriza party continues to juggle the state’s astronomical debt and contentious negotiations over bailouts and harsh austerity measures.

The of new television licenses has become the latest battleground, as the government effectively forces some stations off the air through a new media licensing regime. While the government claims the policy will and increase revenue, critics charge it is a blatant attempt to control the media for Syriza’s own political purposes. According to this narrative, the move is just the latest in a string of actions by Syriza to enhance its own power and weaken its opponents.

Over past several months, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his party have taken several steps to shore up their position in power in the face of poor polling.��One particularly blatant move was a plan to change the way parties are awarded seats in the Greek parliament.��In July, Syriza’s leadership moved to eliminate the 50-seat bonus typically awarded to the party with the most votes, instituting a truly proportional representation system.

Many suspected the plan was to mitigate losses to Syriza’s main rival, the center-right opposition New Democracy party. Without bonus seats, the thinking went, New Democracy would need Syriza as a coalition partner in order to form a government. Furthermore, the new system could have caused New Democracy to break apart, encouraging members to split and form their own parties instead.

As the parliament’s refusal to let Tsipras these changes goes to show, the rest of the establishment fears further chaos in a political system that went through two general elections in 2015.

False Starts

Given the false starts and outright double-speak that has dogged Tsipras’ government since it took power 19 months ago, the Greek premier has not exactly earned the trust needed to enact such reforms. The most egregious, of course, was last year’s much-hyped referendum on austerity. against a bailout deal with creditors and asking Greek voters to support them—which they did in the July 2015 referendum—Tsipras and quickly approved wide-ranging austerity measures. These included substantial pension adjustments, a hike in value added and corporate taxes, collective bargaining reform, privatization, pay cuts for public employees and strict public spending limits.

Tsipras asserted he had no choice but to pass the measures in order to keep Greece in the eurozone, but many of his political allies and European observers (former Italian leader Mario Monti ) saw it as a betrayal of democracy.

Even when going along with European demands for privatization and reform, Syriza has undermined confidence in itself. For example, the government has attempted to nationalize and resell already privatized infrastructure assets, as was the case when it the Skaramangas shipyard to potential Chinese buyers.

Flow of Information

The controversial media reform measures might turn out to be yet another blemish on the government’s record. Despite its justifications, there is plenty of reason for skepticism that Syriza can truly act as a disinterested arbiter in determining which��television networks can stay on the air.��To be certain, Greece does not have a stellar media landscape, with the industry run by a who dictate the flow of information.

Harsh austerity measures have left private media outlets in dire financial straits, forcing layoffs of many journalists. Much of Greek media income comes from government advertising and subsidies, helping create a culture in which journalists are reluctant to criticize the government. Non-mainstream publications have been subject to a number of lawsuits for uncovering government scandals.

Syriza’s move to the number of national TV broadcast licenses to four (down from eight at present) is ostensibly meant to close off avenues for corruption and make the surviving networks more commercially viable. However,��the bidding process was handled not by Greece’s independent regulatory authority, but by the government itself. Thanks to a small number of stations, the government can now more easily wield influence through the distribution of public advertising and the control of licensure.

The European Union (EU) has expressed its concerns over the course of press freedom in Greece, feeding into an over the media’s independence from the government.

If Syriza is trying to assert control over Greek media, Tsipras and his political allies could reach out to their acquaintances in Moscow for advice. Greece’s current government, after all, has already positioned itself as a for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle within the EU.

The evolution of the Russian media landscape since Putin first came to power offers a masterclass in how a supposedly independent press can be brought to heel, with the state of information and developing international channels (like Sputnik and Russia Today) to broadcast the Kremlin’s talking points to an international audience.

Of course, Tsipras doesn’t necessarily need an international platform for his purposes. He simply needs friendlier domestic coverage to help keep his party in in the polls.

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In celebration of ��in May, the United Nations (UN) released a statement extolling the virtues of an unrestricted press. A free media, it said, “can ensure transparency, accountability and the rule of law; promote participation in public and political discourse; and contribute to the fight against poverty.”

Just three weeks later, the UN’s Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) denied the (CPJ), an independent group advocating for freedom of the press,��consultative status��that would allow it access to the UN Human Rights Council and other UN processes as an accredited journalistic association.

By shutting the doors of the United Nations to a press freedom advocate like the CPJ, the NGO Committee (part of the larger��, or ECOSOC) unabashedly blocked the group from carrying out precisely the functions the UN was so busy praising just a few short weeks earlier. For a number of the countries sitting on the NGO Committee, the presence of the CPJ at the Human Rights Council drawing attention to their own human rights failings would have been intolerable.

Uncomfortable Truths

, for one, disapproved of the CPJ casting a light on the 36 journalists murdered in the country since 1992. Through its reporting, the group has shed light on the impunity with which these murders have been carried out: where the victim is a journalist do not result in a conviction.

Some of the most recent cases of media repression were reported by journalists covering the deaths of Russian soldiers alleged to have been fighting alongside separatists in eastern Ukraine, a particularly touchy subject for the Kremlin (which has always denied any direct involvement). In August 2015, the Moscow-based press freedom group, Glasnost Defense Foundation, reported arbitrary detentions, denial of access to public information and the use of violence and physical assaults against journalists reporting on the soldiers’ deaths. In retaliation, the Russian government officially labeled Glasnost a “.”

On June 9, it took the trouble of��warning Syrians��that tobacco and water pipes posed a great risk to their health and urged Syrian officials to implement “plain packaging” to reduce the appeal of cigarettes. It did not, however, urge those Syrian officials to stop bombing��hospitals and civilian neighborhoods��in the besieged city of Aleppo.

In one particularly egregious����involving the funeral of one of the Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, the cameraman of the BBC crew covering the story was assaulted and his equipment stolen by unknown assailants. When this was reported to the police, rather than being treated as victims of the crime, the journalists were treated more like suspects. After being detained and questioned for hours, their equipment (retrieved from a police vehicle) was returned to them electronically wiped.

, which also voted against the CPJ’s accreditation, is ranked as the fifth most censor-happy country in the world in terms of media coverage. Azeri broadcast networks, the main source of news in the country, are all owned by the government or its proxies. International satellite signals are jammed to prevent foreign-based news from entering the country, and the few local journalists who dare criticize the government are subjected to harassment, protracted lawsuits and evictions.

Azeri journalist , a contributor to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was only��recently released��from prison after her case became a source of embarrassment for the government internationally. Aside from Russia and Azerbaijan, the other committee members who voted to deny the CPJ consultative status included China, South Africa, Sudan, Venezuela and Cuba—a veritable roll call of serial press freedom violators.

Living Up to Promises

This is far from the first time that the UN has faced criticism for failing to live up to its own values on press freedom. In��December 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO)—a UN body—held a����for reporters on tobacco-related issues in Turkmenistan, a country in which reporters who criticize the government are subject to intimidation, surveillance and travel bans. That, though, has not stopped the WHO from repeatedly��praising��the Central Asian state for its , a campaign that has more to do with the idiosyncrasies and arbitrary law-making of autocratic ruler Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow than it does with the values of good governance the UN purports to espouse.

When it comes to Turkmenistan, rather than focusing on the success of its anti-smoking drive, the WHO would perhaps be better advised to draw the world’s attention to the����that characterize Turkmenistan’s health system as a whole.

Of course, the organization’s focus on smoking is relentless. On June 9, it took the trouble of����that tobacco and water pipes posed a great risk to their health and urged Syrian officials to implement “plain packaging” to reduce the appeal of cigarettes. It did not, however, urge those Syrian officials to stop bombing����in the besieged city of Aleppo.

What both this episode and the rejection of the CPJ highlight are the obstacles the UN faces in trying to live up to its own democratic values. After all, only�� themselves. How can the body stand up for free expression—and other basic human rights—when those freedoms are anathema to a sizeable part of its membership?

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“Ukraine should make use of its geopolitical advantages and become a bridge between Russia and the West,” an ambitious , following his victory in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election. Despite this emphasis on ’s strong European identity, the president��changed course under pressure from ��and rejected the European Union Association Agreement in November 2013. The protests followed, leading to Yanukovych’s ousting and Russia’s subsequent annexation of .

After a year of violent fighting between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in the east, Ukraine’s economy is now on the verge of collapse, and the displaced population has reached over 1.7 million. But with fighting coming to a rickety standstill under the Minsk II agreement, do Yanukovych’s words still carry weight? Five years on, can Ukraine fulfill her position as a vital bridge between East and West?

A Sovereign Ukraine

While Kiev and Moscow have been committed to fulfilling the military obligations and heavy weapons pullback as stipulated under the Minsk II agreement, there is still much to be done before Ukraine reemerges as a sovereign nation. Currently, implementation of the political components of the Minsk deal appears to have hit a roadblock, and Kiev has yet to grant the separatist regions autonomy, open dialogue over their future elections or unfreeze the economic blockade put in place on the two “people’s republics.” Moreover, on April 6, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko calls for “federalization” of the country, liking such calls to “bacteria trying to infect Ukraine and destroy our unity.”

The deadlock has largely come about as a result of the present in the Minsk II agreement. In a typical catch-22, the Kiev government argues that the rebels cannot govern themselves until elections are held, while the rebels insist the government must first grant the separatist regions autonomy before holding a legitimate vote.

However, Poroshenko has previously his readiness “to grant Donbass special economic zone status with its own regime governing relations with the EU and Russia.” Such a scenario would be a feasible compromise that will stop short of federalization, and one that would ensure Ukraine’s sovereignty over its borders while awarding Donbass the power to become a strong economic force in the country. But would this be enough?

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A Reformed Ukraine

The recent approval by the (IMF) to inject $10 billion into Ukraine’s economy over the next year as part of its larger $40 billion bailout has led many to hope for what Christine Lagarde has “immediate economic stabilization.” These funds will be coupled with an extra $7.5 billion from international organizations, and $15.4 billion in debt relief that Ukraine aims to negotiate with bondholders.

, a Ukrainian businessman, is behind an ample recovery plan to help Ukraine overcome the damage caused by its devastating civil war. During an investment forum called “Ukraine Tomorrow” in Vienna on March 3 — attended by bigwigs such as former UK European Commissioner Lord Mandelson, German Finance Minster Peer Steinbrück and Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz among others — Firtash for Ukraine’s closer integration with the West and announced the of the��Agency for Modernization of Ukraine��(AMU). Meant to attract $300 billion in investment in order to reform and stabilize the country’s economy, the agency “will be structured in a number of directions focused on particular policy areas and led by experienced European politicians or business leaders.”

Firtash, who is currently residing in Austria, is facing US extradition charges at the request of the FBI, which��alleges he was involved in bribing officials in India. However, his controversial reputation is unlikely to have any profound affect on the realization of the AMU initiative. Vienna’s Higher Regional Court has already in his favor, claiming the US does not have sufficient evidence to prove Firtash’s involvement in corrupt practices in India.

While Firtash is a strong proponent for Ukraine’s collaboration with the West and is already in talks with potential investors for the implementation of the program, he has that in order to address the difficult challenges ahead, the three key powers, “Europe, Ukraine, and Russia should sit down together and talk things through.”

Alienating Ukraine is Counterproductive��

Indeed, Russia too has a vital role to play in its neighbor’s economy. Prior to the crisis, 6.8% of Ukraine’s foreign direct investment (FDI) came from Russia, although the real figure is likely to be much higher. Furthermore, Russian and Ukrainian banking and energy sectors are extremely , and despite the crisis, the two countries are maintaining their long-term industry and trade relationship.

Given that Ukraine’s economy needs Russia, and vice versa, Moscow��cannot afford postponing a constructive dialogue with the European Union (EU) and Ukraine for much longer. Against the backdrop of falling oil prices and the weight of international sanctions, Russia’s��economy is set to contract this year by 3% and by 1% in 2016. Russia could help its own economy by collaborating with Ukraine, not least in the form of a new gas deal and return of FDI, but also by cooling tensions with Kiev, which��could result in the removal of sanctions and open Russia back up to international financing.

Easing the burden on Ukraine’s economy by offering a much needed gas discount will prove to be a sign of good faith and will effectively signal Russia’s acknowledgement that alienating Ukraine would be counterproductive. Following the European Commission’s to the Russian government, requesting it to consider giving Ukraine a discount on gas exports, Moscow sent a formal demand for Gazprom to lower its Ukraine prices, indicating that there may indeed be room for compromise in bilateral relations.

Toward a New Ukraine

There are many lessons to be learnt from the past as we look toward a new Ukraine. While Russian aggression in Ukraine should by no means go unpunished, it was the of consideration toward Russian interests in the discussions prefacing the European Union Association Agreement that led to Moscow’s hostility and to Yanukovych’s rejection of the EU proposal. It was only in summer 2013 that the text of the agreement was finally published in finer detail, which “clearly showed to [the Russians] that with such an agreement Ukraine would no longer be able to maintain the same level of relations” with Russia. Despite Russian hostility toward the agreement, the EU continued with the process without consultation, and it pushed forward with the deal.

Had the EU embarked on meaningful trilateral dialogue at the first signs of Russia’s discontent, there is a high chance the whole crisis could have been averted or minimized through a diplomatic solution agreed to by all sides.

We must remember that Ukraine does not belong to the East or the West. While the country has to develop a strong relationship with Europe, it has historical and economic ties to Russia as well. With this in mind, Kiev is excellently placed to become a mediator between the two power blocs in the medium-term. No other country can claim the same mixed heritage and the same tightly knit relationship with Russia while still maintaining ample European aspirations.

But to achieve this, Ukraine has to get its house in order first. The government in Kiev could start by upholding its��end of the deal under the Minsk II agreement by granting the separatist republics autonomy and amnesty, while organizing elections in the region that will abide by Ukrainian law. These should be the first steps to ensure dialogue between all sides continues and that the truce does not fall through due to lack of trust among the signing parties.

As by a now disgraced Yanukovych, Ukraine is�� “a nation of great things, but we will accomplish none of them if we continue to bicker among ourselves … Developing a good relationship with the West and bridging the gap to Russia will help Ukraine.”

It’s time for Kiev to stop being a pawn and become a kingmaker on the European continent.

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“A new ” is upon us,����former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev earlier in November as he was standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate during a symposium that was meant to celebrate the fall of the . Echoing this harsh statement, artillery and tanks rolled again in lockstep into eastern , putting to rest the long-touted ceasefire. Eight months after the first round of sanctions were imposed against Russian actors, and with no end in sight for solving the Ukraine situation, it’s time to take a critical look at what their effects have been so far.

Historically, it has been proven that sanctions are a multipurpose tool that oftentimes yields unpredictable results. George Friedman, chairman of the think tank Stratfor,�� that��the purpose of sanctions “is to induce behavioral changes in a target state by causing economic pain [but in order] to work, sanctions must cause pain.” In Russia’s case, the behavioral change was��outlined by the EU in a directive that��sanctions are ��to penalize Moscow for its “illegal annexation of and deliberate destabilization of Ukraine.”

But have the sanctions inflicted enough pain on Russia’s economy to ensure that behavioral change? So far, the evidence is mixed.

No Dramatic Impact

As the ruble took a plummet last week amid the Russian Central Bank’s����that it would no longer be spending its reserve dollars to prop up the currency, it appears that Putin has begun to embark on internal policy adjustments. Rather than abruptly spending the country’s foreign currency reserves, the “Kremlin has decided to hold its fire” as it seeks to��save its ��for the long run. This change goes to show that is preparing for a drawn out battle as he refuses to let go of Ukraine and aims to keep the country’s reserves for the storm looming over the horizon.

Sanctions aren’t enough to sway the intentions of KGB-trained Putin, begging the question of the impact their continued use will have for European economies.

Russia’s economy does indeed appear to be heading down a grim path, with analysis showing that falling oil prices, high inflation, capital flight and lack of funding from Western markets are bound to be a recipe for disaster.����has already reached 8%, while prices on certain staples have risen as much as 30%. This inflation is a worrying factor for many Russians, who had lived through the hyperinflation that prevailed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Regardless, the view of the sanctions amongst the Russian public clearly differs from that of the West. Ordinary Russians increasingly feel that the West has embarked on a mission to undermine Russia as a nation on the international arena. Rather than venting anger over Putin’s foreign policy and its repercussions on the economy, the president’s approval ratings remain high at 79%, up from their all time low of 53% prior to the annexation of Crimea, according to the Levada Center.��A ��of the polling center has underlined that newfound trust in the president and the “organs of power” has come about largely due to Moscow’s “management” of the crisis in Ukraine. In fact, a large part of the population supports the idea that Western sanctions will encourage economic growth and development at home while strengthening Russia’s economic position in the long run. Evgeni Yacin, of the National Research University and Higher School of Economics, goes even further to����that the only goal of the sanctions – to portray Russia as an evil force – has already been achieved and the policy of the Russian Federation should now be to search for internal drivers of growth.

Moreover, the hopes that Putin’s food embargo on European imports will cause internal dissatisfaction have failed to materialize. Much of these Western products are rather expensive in relation to the average Russian’s salary. A “middle class” Russian single child household with two working parents ��of anywhere between $12,000 and $30,000 a year. While $30,000 can certainly be a considerable sum outside of Russia’s main cities considering lower living expenses, $12,000 a year is certainly not enough for the average family to indulge in imported Western delicacies that cost significantly more than Russian products and are not widely available outside major urban centers.

And if sanctions were intended to punish those wealthy Russians that live off Western goods, recent reports����ways to bypass the embargo. For example, companies can register in Belarus and import Western goods into Russia through the Customs Union. Meanwhile, Russia is building its trade relations with Latin America, and Asia, which have slowly gained a foothold on the Russian market, raising the prospect that Europe could be��permanently ��from Russian shelves in the future.

Attacks on Putin’s inner circle have also failed to materialize into any real policy change. Arkady Rotenberg, a businessman hit by the sanctions regime in March, as well as state oil giant Rosneft and Sberbank, have all��taken their ��to the (ECJ) seeking to overturn sanctions. Rotenberg, whose assets in Italy have been seized,��has ��that while sanctions have failed to have any “dramatic impact” on his life, he feels unjustly targeted. Given the lack of sufficient evidence provided by the EU when imposing sanctions, it is hardly clear how it plans to link Russian companies and individuals to Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, leaving it powerless to defend its decision against those who have increasingly��begun to ��that EU sanctions “may begin to lose their punch.”

Export-Import

Despite dark forecasts of Russia’s economic future, Putin would rather look for opportunities to minimize the impact of the sanctions on the country by looking to other markets. The Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s recent visit to Moscow indicates that such a strategy has already begun to take shape, as Russia turns to for funds and investment. On October 13,��a variety of ��were agreed upon including a deal to swap $25 billion in Chinese yuan for Russian rubles over the next three years, and to encourage trade by a newly provided credit line to Russia’s development bank, Vnesheconombank, by China’s Export-Import Bank. Further deals on weapons are to be reached in the near future, indicating that with Western doors closed off, Russia is looking to China for the long haul.

Sanctions aren’t enough to sway the intentions of KGB-trained Putin, begging the question of the impact their continued use will have for European economies. While the US is hardly phased by sanctions, given its much smaller trade with the Russian state, Europe’s already rattled economies are��far more ��as the did 12 times more trade with Russia than the US in 2013.

So far, Russia’s response to the sanctions has been defiant. Speaking prior to the G20 summit in Australia, Putin��continued��to call��them illegal as they violate international law.��

The Kremlin’s retaliatory measures have particularly taken a toll on Europe’s farmers, driving down prices and creating a surplus of European fruit and vegetables. A third of EU’s agricultural products were sold to Russia last year, causing uproar amongst farmers who are increasingly frustrated by having to pay the price for Europe’s policies. As French farmers��flung ��at government buildings, Italian farmers, who sold €72 million worth of fruits and vegetables to Russia, are also angry over their loss of investment in the country and the lack of space for its goods on the European market. While the situation is less than ideal for Russia, Europe is hardly experiencing prosperous times.

Looking Ahead

Despite Russia’s creeping recession and the EU’s poor growth, Ukraine is by far the greatest loser in this battle between east and west. While sanctions were intended to punish Russia’s actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, today it is Ukraine that is��edging towards ��with its GDP predicted to shrink 9% this year.��While keen to inflict pain on Russia, the US and EU have failed to provide the necessary backing to ensure the survival for Ukraine and has offered it “a façade of support with little substance behind it,”�� to George Soros.

In order to alleviate the economic pain the country will face, the West needs to provide Ukraine with a minimum cash injection of $20 billion to save the country from collapse. However, in the US, but particularly in the EU, there is hardly enough money or political will to come up with the funds to prop Ukraine. As France’s ambassador to the US, , stated, “Putin has won because we were not ready to die for Ukraine.” Any meaningful rescue package would have to involve Russia and China, an agreement that seems unlikely to happen in the near future.

So far, Russia’s response to the sanctions has been defiant. Speaking prior to the G20 summit in Australia, Putin�� to call��them illegal as they violate international law. While the situation for the Russian economy is certainly far from perfect, the country has thus far managed to avoid a recession. A falling ruble has helped domestic manufacturers and will boost (dollar dominated) oil revenues. The country has enough to sustain the damage from sanctions in the short term, as oil exports still provide a steady stream of revenue. Nevertheless, in the medium term Russia will suffer structural economic problems, as the sanctions regime will undermine its technological modernization and will seriously slash its future growth prospects.

The deal with China will provide much needed short-term funding for the Russian state, but as gas remains the main topic of conversation, the country’s overreliance on natural resources could bring about a serious case of the Dutch disease. Moscow’s strategy so far has been to find Band-Aid solutions to its most immediate economic problems, pivoting to Asia and bolstering internal production.

But with Europe’s economy in the doldrums and Ukraine on the brink of financial recession, Russia is not the only one to bear the brunt of Western sanctions. Russia today remains the 8^th largest economy in the world and any sanctions that target its wealth will complicate the global economic landscape as a whole.

Moreover, sanctions on Russia have created a serious rift among Western analysts: John Mearsheimer, a respected academic,��has ��his disagreement with sanctioning Russia, claiming that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.” As both blocs continue down their preset path, aloof one from the other, maybe Gorbachev was right: A new Cold War seems to be upon us indeed.

The views expressed��in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect��51�Թ�’s��editorial policy.

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With the shooting of Kharkiv Mayor Gennady Kernes and a��fresh round of enforced on Russian officials, instability and violence continues to plague Ukraine’s future economic and security prospects.��In the hope of true change, all eyes have turned to billionaire presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko to save the day.��Currently in the polls with 48%, the “Chocolate King” — a nickname he obtained from his confectionary empire, Roshen — along with his reformist pro-Western stance, appears best placed to win the May 25 presidential election.

Poroshenko has certainly proven himself committed to change in Ukraine, with many going as far as to him “the CEO of the revolution.” But before we hail him as the leader of the new Ukraine, we need to ask ourselves: Who is Poroshenko and is he fit to lead crisis-ridden Ukraine out of Russia’s grip?

A Self-Made Man

Born near Odessa, in Southwest Ukraine, Poroshenko started his career as one of the country’s very first business consultants after completing his degree in economics. When the hectic 1990s came around, Poroshenko was able to get his hands on several state-owned confectionary companies, which he then transformed into his very own chocolate empire, dubbing him Ukraine’s Willy Wonka. Apart from his lucrative chocolate empire, he owns the Ukrainian Channel 5 opposition media station, several car plants and a shipyard, amassing a��total net worth��of , making him the seventh richest man in Ukraine.

Besides his many business dealings and oligarch status, Poroshenko is no newbie to the political sphere. Having held multiple governmental positions, he has always appeared unable to associate with just one political party, which,�� to journalist Andriy Skumin, is the norm for members of the modern Ukrainian “party in power,” where “ideology is secondary; power always comes first.”

Power Over Ideology?

When first elected to public office in 1998 as a representative to the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, Poroshenko joined the Social Democratic Party. Soon after, in 2000, he formed his own “Party of Solidarity of Ukraine.” This romance was short-lived as he went on to cofound the Party of Regions — yes, the party of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.

In 2002, Poroshenko ditched the Party of Regions, this time for the “Our Ukraine” party of Viktor Yushchenko. After the latter became president, Poroshenko served as the head of the National Security and Defense Council, and then as foreign minister in Yulia Tymoshenko’s government from 2009 to 2010.

Poroshenko is far from naïve, and he would be wise to tread carefully around the grizzly bear, knowing that a strained relationship with the Kremlin will likely lead to a sour situation not just for his business, but also many others with close ties to Russia.��

Despite his strong criticisms of Yanukovych, Poroshenko accepted his offer to serve as trade and economic development minister in 2012. His constantly shifting support gives weight to the theory that in post-Soviet Ukrainian politics, ideology and platform appear to matter a lot less than power. Poroshenko is��currently not ��with any political movement, and his former Orange Revolution partner, Tymoshenko of the Fatherland Party, is now his bitter enemy and rival candidate.

The Ultimate Triad ��

One of the central elements of Poroshenko’s campaign has been a promise to lead Ukraine down the path of modernization, undergo painful but necessary reforms (including an end to state gas subsidies), and finally guide the country to economic stability. Well aware that International Monetary Fund (IMF) reforms and conditionality will be largely unpopular with the population, he��has ��that Ukraine’s rich will be the ones footing most of the bill, not the poor. Whether these promises become a reality if he is elected remains to be seen, considering his close ties with controversial oligarchs such as����— a gas middleman involved in a fair share of dodgy dealings.

This brings us to his next main issue: the grave problem of Ukraine’s endemic corruption. The Maidan protests were sparked largely as a result of Ukrainian citizens’ anger with the greedy and corrupt elite, blamed for failing to provide the country with prosperity and jobs. Given his status as one of Ukraine’s wealthiest men, Poroshenko certainly appears to be in a good position to keep the oligarchs in check and tackle corruption. At the same time, it remains to be seen how he will balance this agenda with the protection of his own business interests, both in Russia and Europe.

Despite advocating a pro-West stance and the need to sign the original European Union (EU) association agreement thrown in the bin by Yanukovych, Poroshenko has been hesitant to fully distance himself from the Kremlin,��openly that “without dialogue with Russia, it will be impossible to create security.” Poroshenko also has an interest in ensuring that Ukrainian goods will continue to enjoy a place on the Russian market. It seems implausible that the Chocolate King, even with all his financial stability, will be able to avoid paying lip service to Russian President Vladimir Putin. After all, 40% of his business takes place in Russia and last year’s ban on his chocolate goods, most likely politically motivated, has dealt quite a blow to his business.

Poroshenko is far from naïve, and he would be wise to tread carefully around the grizzly bear, knowing that a strained relationship with the Kremlin will likely lead to a sour situation not just for his business, but also many others with close ties to Russia. A wrong move on his part might end up hurting the Ukrainian economy rather than repairing it.

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Walk the Walk, Don’t Talk the Talk��

While it is true that the Chocolate King has positioned himself at the forefront of Ukraine’s battle with corruption, his own close relationship with billionaire gas tycoon Firtash certainly raises serious questions about his commitment to the cause. Firtash made his billions as a natural gas trader through his joint venture RosUrkEnergo (RUE) with Gazprom, which has also been��closely to FBI-wanted mobster Semion Mogilevich. Firtash himself has failed to deny his links with organized crime, claiming that without it he could not have built his empire.

Firtash, who is said to be worth anywhere between $500 million to $10 billion, has been the subject of a more recent scandal and “victim” to the crackdown on Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. A known Yanukovych supporter, Firtash fled to Vienna after the former president’s ouster, where he is currently facing extradition to the United States on charges of corruption. Despite trying to distance himself from Firtash and his kind in order to ensure that his anticorruption campaign remains legitimate, it did not take long for�� to surface��that both Vitali Klitschko and Poroshenko paid a visit to Firtash in Vienna, sparking rumors that Poroshenko may be trying to save the latter from extradition.

This upward chain of questionable links surrounding Poroshenko’s relationship with Firtash hardly bodes well for his reformist reputation.

Ukraine’s Chocolate King certainly has a strong support base in the country and his campaign has won over the many Ukrainian citizens who are fed up with the old elite regime. In a show of unity, Klitschko, the heavyweight boxing champion, withdrew his candidacy to throw his full support behind Poroshenko. But current support does not imply Poroshenko can or will pursue the agenda he is so strongly advocating for, and chances are his oligarchic ties, business interests and Moscow calculations will hamper his ability to lead as a reformer.

What is certain is that Ukraine needs to find a middle ground between Russia and the EU, before it gets torn apart from the outside and from within. Will Poroshenko manage to guarantee the country’s solidarity and its strategic positioning in Europe? After all, it’s much more simple to talk the talk than it is to walk the walk.

*[This article was originally published by��.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As Crimea's referendum on March 16 dawns, tensions in Simferopol begin to escalate. Russian troops, whose presence has become  over the past week, have made attempts to seize Ukrainian bases and have overtaken a Ukrainian military hospital by force.

Despite condemnations and threats of economic sanctions being thrown around by Western leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin is still holding strong with no sign of avail. While it is certainly true that Russia has been demonstrating serious militaryaggression by invading Ukraine's sovereign territory, a better-rounded approach should be employed to examine the latest Russia vs. West standoff.

Cold War Propaganda

Since the onset of the crisis, both Western and Russian media have been coming up with varying theories regarding the turn of events and the future of Ukraine. While talk of a return to the Cold War is a rather overblown reaction, the propaganda being thrown around left, right and center has certainly created a sense of Cold War déjà vu for many.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has publically accused Putin of losing his senses; the US has consistently threatened to enforce economic sanctions; and interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has asserted that Ukraine "" to Russia. But all these empty words have translated into little action and Putin continues to play the game by rules of his own making.

The Russian president can certainly be called lot of things, but a madman he is not. Putin is well-aware that while the US can threaten trade sanctions all it likes, European countries will remain more hesitant to appear aggressive in the face of their Russian neighbor. Sanctions would certainly send a damning message to the Kremlin and inflict a serious blow to Russia's economy, but Europe would experience its own boomerang repercussions.

A secret revealed that British Prime Minister David Cameron, who gave a strong-worded speech threatening Moscow with diplomatic, political and economic consequences, had absolutely no intention of realizing these threats. Leaders from European Union (EU) member states are aware that addressing the Ukrainian problem with hostile actions toward Russia will do more damage than good and spiral the situation further out of control.

The Hypocrisy of the West

Leaders of the US and EU member states would have been wise to brush up on their history before entering the murky territory that is Crimea. If they had done so, they would know this territory has been bouncing back and forth between Russian, Turkish and Ukrainian jurisdiction for centuries. The region has a complicated history but has always had close ties to Russia. While it is true the current crisis is an issue deserving international attention, the West's reaction has been .

Let us leave aside most of the accusations proffered by the West for a moment and examine the situation from the other side. In 2013, peaceful protests erupted after then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych failed to sign the association agreement with the EU. When demonstrations turned sour and clashes between protestors and police forces began to escalate, Yanukovych negotiated a deal with the opposition, caving in to their demands and offering swift elections.

However, in a move that has more the semblance of a coup d’état than the result of a democratic revolution, extremist opposition factions continued the fighting, seizing government buildings even after Yanukovych signed the deal. With the parliament forced into a corner, MPs voted for his removal, leaving the democratically elected president with no choice other than to flee.

Some of these radical nationalists managed to grab onto the reins of power and became part, according to the Western narrative, of a legitimate coalition government.

The next day, in a move that provoked outcry from Russian populations, the Ukrainian Parliament that stripped the Russian language of its official status in Ukraine. The bill was quickly repealed but the damage was already done, as the move was enough to provoke fear in Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

The fact that some of these radical nationalists now sit in the government was recently confirmed by the between EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet. He confessed to Ashton that snipers behind the killings of protestors at Maidan were most likely linked to elements of the current coalition government, and not Yanukovych supporters. "Gosh!" was the seemingly surprised response of Ashton, but she agreed that no investigation of these incidents would be desired.

The message here is simple: When it comes to exposing Russian acts of aggression, everyone is on board; but when similar atrocities are uncovered concerning the other side, these issues are better left in the dark.   

The ousting of Yanukovych and his subsequent replacement with opposition leaders, some from radical factions, was not considered a coup because the forces were pro-West and the move was widely welcomed by the US and EU.

But let us not forget, Yanukovych was no dictator. He was, however ineffective and corrupt, a who received the 48.9% of the vote in the 2010 elections, dubbed by international observers as free and fair.

In light of this, it seems reasonable that Russia refuses to recognize the interim Ukrainian government as legitimate, considering that nobody voted these individuals into power. In similar fashion, one cannot overlook the inconsistency shown by some democratic leaders between the treatment of Yanukovych, a wealthy, corrupt and pro-Russian leader, and Yulia Tymoshenko, a wealthy and corrupt pro-Westernleader. While the former was forced into exile, the latter's release from prison was hailed as a victory for democracy.

Putin's High-Hand

While the US and EU have been huffing and puffing as usual, Putin decided to go all in with his aces rather than engaging in a rhetorical chess game like the one played by Western governments.

Whatever the West claims, however, Putin's end game was never war. Among his own population, he is largely seen as standing up against what Russia believes was an illegal coup and the ousting of a democratically elected president. Accusations that Putin has gone mad simply do not hold. Within Russia, his popularity rating is up seven points from January and currently stands at 72%. According to a , the majority of Russians agree that Ukraine has been taken over by extreme nationalists, while 65% believe that Moscow had the right to step in and defend the Russian population in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

This appears to be consistent with Russian citizens' strong desire for security and stability after two decades of post-Soviet chaos. Echoing the thoughts of the famous Italian spin-doctor, Niccolò Machiavelli, Russian people believe their leader should be feared rather than liked. Putin is certainly doing a fine job at that.

Next Steps?

US President Barack Obama has extensively argued that the secession of Crimea and its annexation by Russia would be an act in violation of international law. Moreover, it is not a fundamental right and unilateral secession is unlawful, even if supported by the local population. The move would be to the Ukrainian Constitution, which requires the whole of Ukraine to vote for a secession. 

Putin has strategically calculated his next moves and possesses the support of the Russian and Crimean population. But this is not to say that Russian actions are not plagues with hypocrisy themselves. After all, while the Kremlin has compared the situation to that of Kosovo, the two are evidently not one and the same, considering there are no clear signs of violent discrimination against the Russian population of Crimea.

However, that is not to say these — such as the Svoboda party, which is adamant on breaking ties with Russia — will not strike in the future considering their strategic position within the current Ukrainian government.

On another level, Russia's support of Crimea has been inconsistent with its actions toward similar uprisings in Chechnya, Georgia and Azerbaijan, which it crushed ruthlessly.

The escalation of events in Crimea has resulted in a sticky situation for everyone and all powers remain on their toes in anticipation of the referendum's result and its subsequent aftermath. Nobody wants a war. The ousting of Yanukovych and the creation of a new government are by no means legitimate, but neither is holding a referendum during a Russian occupation of Crimea and with no option for the status quo.

Western leaders need to remember that Putin is not off his rocker and is merely engaging in a high stakes poker game. Both the US and EU need to think wisely about their next steps toward the ex-KGB agent to avoid destabilizing Ukraine any further. Putin has raised the stakes, and the West has no option but to go all in.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�'s editorial policy.

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