Europe

Ukraine and its backers won support from little more than half the members of the United Nations General Assembly to declare invalid Crimea’s referendum to secede, as Russia wielded diplomatic and economic pressure for members to abstain or cast no ballot.

Read the full Bloomberg Business Week article here. 

Less than a week before its planned deployment, the future of the EU military mission to the Central African Republic (CAR) is increasingly in jeopardy. In four consecutive force generation conferences held in February and early March, EU member states have been unable to muster the required troops and equipment. Subsequently, in an appeal letter to EU governments dated 11 March, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton warned that the lack of necessary capabilities puts the plans to launch the operation by mid-March at risk, adding that a delay would taint the EU’s credibility.

Will Vladimir Putin or Barack Obama ultimately benefit most from the crisis in Ukraine? Most pundits are betting on the former. The Russian president has pulled off a bravura display of ruthless guile in seizing control of Crimea. His American counterpart has looked limited, calculating that Moscow will want an “off ramp” out of a crisis that currently seems to be going Moscow’s way.

An unarmed OSCE mission has arrived in the Ukraine, in the hope that this will enable a diplomatic solution to the crisis. A clever move, says Richard Gowan, an expert on EU security.

Read the full Deutsche Welle article here.

The Ukrainian crisis has aroused an ugly array of thugs, from the snipers who fired on protesters in Kiev to pro-Russian biker gangs. But numerous multilateral organizations have been implicated too.

Read the full World Politics Review article here.