Region & Country

This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker talks with historian and writer Dr. Ilana Bet-El about the ongoing protests in Israel, the surge of the far right in that country and parallel political developments in Europe and beyond.

Greek and Turkish Cypriots have moved farther apart since a failed summit in 2017, hampering cooperation in several important matters and increasing tensions in the eastern Mediterranean. Hopes for reunifying Cyprus are faint at present, but the parties can still work toward more modest goals.

This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker and Elissa Jobson talk with Tbilisi-based journalist Joshua Kucera and Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for the South Caucasus Olesya Vartanyan about the March protests in Georgia and what they might spell for the political future of the country.

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Richard speaks with Nigar Göksel, Crisis Group’s Türkiye director, to discuss Ankara’s foreign relations under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and, with elections scheduled for May, whether a change in Ankara would bring a change in policy.
 

Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine has prompted discussion of how to hold top Kremlin officials accountable for this flagrant violation of international law. In this Q&A, Crisis Group examines the pros and cons of three main options that have been broached to date.

The following is adapted from a March 2023 report by Crisis Group’s President and CEO Comfort Ero to the organisation’s Trustees (before Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s 20-21 March visit to Moscow). She looks at the Ukraine war and its knock-on effects – from big-power polarisation to middle-power activism and disquiet outside the West about the conflict.

This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker and Elissa Jobson are joined by Bert Koenders, former Dutch minister of foreign affairs and current Crisis Group trustee, to discuss how the war in Ukraine has changed Europe and what the EU can do to adapt.

War & Peace is a podcast series from the International Crisis Group, in which Olga Oliker and Elissa Jobson interview experts about all things Europe and its neighbourhood, from Russia to Türkiye and beyond. Their guests shed new light on everything that helps or hinders prospects for peace. Episodes from past series of War & Peace can be found here: Season 1, Season 2 and Season 3.

In UN debates over Russia’s war in Ukraine, Western countries are still pledging to back Kyiv militarily, while non-Western states are more inclined to call for a negotiated peace. Thus far, however, the latter’s proposals for reaching that goal have been short on detail.

The United States and Europe get a few things wrong about global attitudes toward Russia’s war in Ukraine.