The European Union and United States have a responsibility to raise their voices and actively confront the Russian Federation with respect to minority rights and freedom of expression in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

Minority abuse and impunity in the face of grave violations of human rights should not be accepted in silence and the plight of the Crimeans must be given the attention it deserves. It must be possible to hold Russia responsible for its illegal actions while simultaneously recognising that Crimea, and in particular the Crimean population, is the victim.

A balanced assessment of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict is a rather challenging task for policy-makers. This is in large part because the views and data collected from both sides comes under the influence of two opposing public discourses. On the one hand, Russia is perceived as the aggressor breaking the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

HIC Interview with Linda Eichler, Vice President of the YEPP ... Here, we present to you our interview with Linda Eicheler currently running as a candidate for the European Parliament. She is the youngest candidate on the list of Pro Patria and Res Publica Union (IRL), the leading conservative party in Estonia.

The crisis in Ukraine originated in President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to abandon a far-reaching Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets and protests stretched over several months, culminating in an eruption of violence in February 2014.

Guest Contributor: Ghenadie Virtos 22nd March 2014 The latest developments in the Crimean peninsula – which saw Russian troops enter, take over essential infrastructure and military facilities, and formalise a territorial takeover in just a few weeks – provided a surreal ...

As reports emerge of a growing sense of unease in Moldova and the Baltic States, the HIC thinks it is critical that we ask what recent events in Crimea signal for the eastern frontiers of Europe as a whole. Here, we present to you our interview with Colm Lauder, currently the Secretary General of Europe's largest political youth organisation, the Youth of the European People's Party (YEPP).

As declared by Russia Today, Russian troops were deployed to Crimea ‘only to protect human rights’. The Crimean issue unfolding at present was compared to the secession of Kosovo, and daring to deny the illusory similarities between these two wildly different conflicts is described as ‘rewriting the rulebook’ on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine.

Guest Contributors: Timothy Stafford and Laura Dzelzyte 18th March 2014 After more than a decade promoting nonintervention in the internal affairs of other countries, Russia has become the latest convert to the concept of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, or R2P. The notion, ...

Last Thursday I took the metro to Belorusskaya, to get the Sheremetyevo airport train out of Moscow. Perhaps not for the last time in my life but probably the last for a while, at least. During the last six months I have met, befriended and drunk too much vodka with some warm, sensible and decent Russian people.