How important it is for Ukraine to reform its self-governance structure, if truly considering a state based on Western European standards of regional self-determination and individualism Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lawrow has repeatedly been lobbying for a federalization of the Ukrainian state, as an answer to the recent Crimean and Donbas crisis. The Crimean referendum
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A black swan is an event with three properties. First of all, a black swan is a rare event, based on past knowledge, and one that is impossible to predict. However, although its probability is low, when the event occurs, it has an enormous impact. Last, the event is easily explained afterwards. People didn’t see
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Trade wars fought out by snipers instead of bombs
An “economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy” is how U.S. president Woodrow Wilson described trade sanctions in 1919. In the aftermath of World War I, he presented them at a conference in Indianapolis as the alternative that would make actual war redundant. One definition of these sanctions that still holds today is that they are measures
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As a reaction on new European Union sanctions looming over Russia, on Monday September 8th, Russian prime minister Dimitry Medvedev threatened to decline access for European flights through Russian Airspace. Medvedev stated that ‘bypassing our airspace could drive many struggling airlines into bankruptcy’. And indeed, because of the sheer size of the world’s largest country,
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