Free Republic

Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has defended Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, saying Russia's leader was "pushed" into the conflict."The war in Ukraine is the tip of the iceberg of a conflict aimed at reshaping the world order," she said earlier this month. "So we have to fight this battle."

Former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili opens up over the disappointments, betrayals and deals made in the run-up to the 2008 war. This is a full transcript of the exclusive interview the former president of Georgia gave IWPR. IWPR: Looking back at things from a decade-long perspective, do you think the West has learned any lessons from the 2008 war? Saakashvili: The thing is, the West is motivated by several instincts and one of the main instincts is appeasement. They always want to delay the problem, they always want to refer to the past, to the future, anything but the...

Maxim Eristavi is a nonresident research fellow with the Atlantic Council and co-founder of Hromadske International, an independent news outlet, based in Kiev. Ukraine’s complex political intrigues can be hard to figure out. But this week we’ve arrived at a rare moment of clarity. The most important domestic issue in our country is corruption. And for the first time in our modern history, we have the people and the institutions in place to fight it. But at the very moment when anti-corruption officials have really started to tackle the problem, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is moving to undermine them. His...