Atlantic Council: Back to the Bad Old Days in Kyiv

As horrible as the attack on Gusovsky was, it represents just the tip of the iceberg. Since the beginning of 2017, more than fifty-five attacks have occurred against anticorruption activists and now reform-minded politicians.

And to make matters worse, not only are the perpetrators rarely caught (they were in Gusovsky's case), but Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko—perhaps giving new meaning to the word chutzpah—actually blamed activists for their suffering, implying that civil society's noisy criticism of Ukraine's corrupt old guard was a major contributing factor to the violence directed against them.[...]

Not everyone sees a direct tie to the elections, however. Some argue that post-Maidan Ukraine's inability to fundamentally reform the police, prosecutors, and judicial system has allowed corrupt local mafia clans which thrived under former President Yanukovych to bounce back and act with impunity. And when it comes to Odesa, reformist MP Mustafa Nayyem even warned that national security concerns are at stake and that the Ukrainian state risks seeing the city slip under the control of Russian-supported local elites around Odesa's notoriously corrupt mayor Gennady Trukhanov.[...]

For starters, the West should use its financial leverage against Kyiv and make clear to Poroshenko and those around him that unless they start solving the assaults against anticorruption activists, the financial spigot will be turned off. 

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Atlantic Council: Moscow’s Eye Turns South

The parties across southern Europe that have sought to align themselves with Russia differ in ideology and position, but they all advocate for Russian interests, vote against common EU foreign policies, and undermine establishment parties to engender chaos and instability. For these reasons, the Kremlin has worked strategically and actively to cultivate closer relations with Europe’s emerging insurgent parties on the left and the right.

Italy is most vulnerable to Russian influence. In the past few years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has become increasingly popular among the Italian public; he is widely perceived as a strong and effective leader, the only one capable of saving Europe from the threats of Islamist terrorism and mass illegal immigration. Putin is seen by many as an adversary of the West’s “globalist elites,” and therefore a potential ally in Italy’s efforts to regain its sovereignty. [...]

M5S poses a particular danger. In the fall of 2017, it was consistently polling as the most popular party in Italy. The party’s documented pro-Kremlin stance combined with its grassroots mobilization capacity make it an especially important ally for the Kremlin, and thus a dangerous force against the EU, NATO, and the transatlantic partnership. With Italy poised for elections in early 2018, an M5S win could dramatically shift Italian foreign policy away from EU cooperation, support for common defense, and continuation of economic sanctions against Russia. [...]

But Moscow is only willing to go so far in supporting its allies. In 2015, Greece was still reeling from the economic crisis, which almost led the country to default on its debt. Alexis Tsipras, newly elected as prime minister after his party Syriza’s win in the elections, was locked in difficult negotiations with the EU over additional bailout funds. Tsipras’s government had made better relations with Russia a top priority, and that spring, Tsipras traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin. While both countries denied that the purpose of Tsipras’s visit was to request financial support, the timing raised eyebrows. Tsipras walked away empty-handed, nonetheless.

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