CEURUS in the Media

Press release — 30 March 2014

CEURUS scholars comment on the current crisis in Ukraine and its implications

In a blog run by the European Journal of International Law, Professor Lauri Mälksoo comments on international legal aspects of the situation in Crimea; writing in the ongoing EU-Russia blog, visiting professor Andrey Makarychev provides insight and critical commentary on the development of Russia’s international relations. Finally, senior researcher Andrey Belyi comments in the European Geopolitical Forum on the implications of the Crimea crisis for energy markets.

Reflecting on the latest developments in Crimea and Russia, Mälksoo stresses that the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation was not only against everything that has been written in Russian legal scholarship over the last twenty years; it also reminds those knowledgeable of Russian history of a similar radical shift in Russia’s foreign policy stances in the 19th century – a shift that involved a conscious breach of the own earlier treaty commitments and presented “the international community with a fait accompli in Crimea.”…

In his latest blog following the events around Crimea, Makarychev compares the situation in Crimea to that of Cyprus. Drawing parallels between both cases of annexation and limited recognition, he points out that by absorbing Crimea completely and as fast as possible Russia drew the lesson from cases of unrecognized statehood such as Northern Cyprus, that continue to be unstable and unsustainable. At the same time, the case of Turkey should also teach Moscow about the political price that is to be paid for military intervention in neighboring states. In the meantime, the EU as well draws lessons from Cyprus that can be directly relevant to the situation in Crimea…

Asking what consequences the current political crisis between Russian and the West will have on the supply of oil and gas and the broader energy business, Belyi discusses various aspects of economic and political global interdependence of states and market actors and the potential consequences of economic sanctions against Russia. He concludes that even if the current crisis may seem to some like the beginning of a new Cold War, this will never be the kind of bipolar world struggle that we had in the past. Looked at from an polit-economical perspective, the struggle we are facing now is that “between economically vulnerable states” that are hanging in this together…