Stephen Zunes : Eastern Europe
There’s No Excuse for Russian Aggression, But US Double Standards on Illegal War are Hard to Stomach
8 March 2022
US’s Support for Invasions Should Disqualify It From Leading on Russia-Ukraine
26 January 2022
The United States and Russia are heading toward a dangerous showdown over Ukraine, as the U.S. has 8,500 troops on high alert, ready to deploy to Eastern Europe should Russia invade Ukraine, and a new round of arms shipments have begun arriving in Ukraine.
Resisting Stolen Elections: Lessons from the Philippines, Serbia, Ukraine, and Gambia
23 October 2020
In 1986, the National Movement for Free Elections in the Philippines (NAMFREL) mobilized as many as 500,000 volunteers to monitor the most sensitive and vulnerable precincts in an effort to minimize violence and electoral fraud.
Putin’s U.S. Defenders
15 September 2016
After experiencing decades of rightwing attacks for being “soft” on Moscow, progressives may be feeling a bit of whiplash as they witness prominent conservatives—with Donald Trump in the lead—heaping praise upon an autocratic Russian leader. Trump has praised President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative who tolerates little dissent, for his “very strong control over a […]
The Good News and the Bad News About Turkey’s Attempted Coup
19 July 2016
The survival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Welfare Party of an attempted coup last week is a mixed blessing.
Turkey’s Creeping Authoritarianism: Is the Resistance Enough?
13 May 2016
Turkey’s march towards authoritarianism took another dangerous turn this past week with the forced resignation of moderate Islamist Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, apparently at the insistence of President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.
U.S. Leadership Against Russia Crippled By Its Own Hypocrisy
15 September 2014
A Nonviolent Alternative for Ukraine
24 May 2014
Straight Talk on the U.S. and Ukraine
13 March 2014
Given the limits of its power and its own compromised relationship with international law, the U.S. isn’t in a position to do much about Ukraine.
Lessons from the Velvet Revolution
9 November 2009
The 20th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that overthrew the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia was one of the most impressive civil insurrections in history. It was not the military might of NATO, but the power of nonviolent action by ordinary citizens which brought down the system. The popular uprising against the repressive system that had ruled their country for much of the previous four decades — along with comparable movements, which came to the fore that year in Poland, Hungary and East Germany — marks a great triumph of the human spirit….
