The secession crisis in Ukraine has now passed the three-year mark. The Russian Federation’s March 2014 annexation of Crimea is a fait accompli. Fighting in eastern Ukraine grinds on, with a death toll reportedly in the neighborhood of 10,000, and signs that Russian-backed forces are trying to move their area of control south and west along the Black Sea coast, toward Crimea. Meanwhile, the sanctions regime imposed on Russia by Western countries, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand retains a shaky hold in a context of political volatility.
In this special double issue of the Russian Social Science Review, we have assembled more than a decade’s worth of analytical works in English translation that examine this vexed situation from many angles. No easy answers are to be found.
—P.A.K.