Newsletter
Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum

The West is not prepared for the long haul over Ukraine

The European Union and NATO are involved in a competition with Russia that they could lose. That competition comprises three main strands, each of which reveals the West’s lack of readiness for a long, drawn-out struggle with Moscow. First, there is a conflict over the sovereignty of Ukraine, which has been compromised by Russian military support for rebels in the east of the country and by the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea. Second, Russia and the West are engaged in a communications war that the EU is unlikely to win unless there is a sea change in confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s well-oiled machinery of propaganda. And third, the security of the Baltic states is at stake. There, EU and NATO leaders are still unprepared to deal with any trouble that Russia could engineer.


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