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Sasse is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe. Her research focuses on Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Ukrainian politics and society, EU enlargement, and comparative democratization.
Gwendolyn Sasse is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe. Her research focuses on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, EU enlargement, and comparative democratization.
Sasse is the director of the newly founded Centre for East European Research and International Studies (Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien, ZOiS) in Berlin.
She is also professor of comparative politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations and the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford, where she also works on ethnic conflict, minority issues, migration, and diaspora politics.
Prior to her 2007 arrival in Oxford, Sasse was a senior lecturer in the European Institute and the Department of Government at the London School of Economics.
Her most recent books include The Crimea Question: Identity, Transition, and Conflict (Harvard University Press, 2007), which won the Alexander Nove Prize awarded by the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies; Europeanization and Regionalization in the EU’s Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe: the Myth of Conditionality (Palgrave, 2004; co-authored with James Hughes and Claire Gordon); and Ethnicity and Territory in the Former Soviet Union: Regions in Conflict (Frank Cass, 2001; co-edited with James Hughes). She has also published extensively in academic journals.
Sasse is a member of the Advisory Council of the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany. She comments regularly on East European politics, in particular Ukraine, in U.S., British, and European media outlets.
The release of U.S. aid to Ukraine is one of many steps necessary to contain Russian aggression. Western leaders must remind publics what is at stake and think ahead to avoid delays at every turn.
Gloomy speeches at the Munich Security Conference reflect the general mood two years into Russia’s war on Ukraine. Rather than drawing conclusions and analogies that benefit the Kremlin, the West should bolster support for Kyiv.
Ukrainians’ continued trust in President Zelensky and the armed forces suggests Kyiv can navigate domestic political turbulence. But Ukraine’s military success hinges on stronger European support.
War in the Middle East and U.S. domestic politics risk weakening Western support to Ukraine. The EU must remember the stakes in Russia’s war and be ready to step up.
All the actors supporting Ukraine need to work together now to establish a Euro-Atlantic strategy. Waiting for the war to end is not an option.
Only the combination of military assistance and reconstruction efforts now will one day put Ukraine in the position to decide if and when it wants to negotiate.
Ukraine’s recent gains highlight the unpredictability of Russia’s war. The main challenge for Western governments, NATO, and the EU is to act in unison while adjusting to the evolving military dynamics.
Granting Ukraine EU candidate status would send an important signal to its government and citizens. But this must go hand in hand with weapons supplies and support for the country’s reconstruction.
President Zelensky seems willing to accept a neutral status for Ukraine in return for firm security guarantees. But without the required political will on the Russian side, a mutually acceptable deal may be out of reach.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have profound consequences for the stability of the region and for the future of European security, not to mention the immense human suffering. We asked Carnegie Europe’s scholars to give their assessment about how the military attack will fundamentally change the post-Cold War era.
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