Ukraine is closer than you think

Despite its turbulent domestic politics, Ukraine rarely featured at the top of the EU’s security agenda in the post-Soviet period. The scale of current Russian military intervention changed that, bringing the war to the EU’s doorstep, and challenging a previously lenient approach to Russia which the EU refused to see as a potential aggressor. The current conflict is an expression of Putin’s geopolitical aspirations and his desperate attempt to maintain a Russian grip on its “near abroad”. However, it is also a culmination of Ukraine’s long struggle for national self-determination on multiple levels.