On the eve of the big election year in Ukraine: winners take a toll?

The Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia) is a network of over 100 academics, mainly from North America and post-Soviet Eurasia, advancing new approaches to research on security, politics, economics, and society in Russia and Eurasia. Its core missions are to connect scholarship to policy on and in Russia and Eurasia and to foster a community committed to developing policy-relevant and collaborative research.

PONARS Eurasia offers analysis and influences policy debates through its Policy Memo and Policy Perspectives series. The program’s annual policy conference (conducted this year on September 21) brings over 30 leading scholars together with nearly 200 members of the DC policy, NGO, and academic community.

 Olexiy Haran presented his joint policy memo with Petro Burkovsky “On  the  eve  of  the  big  election  year  in  Ukraine:  winners  take  a  toll?”. The authors suggest that on the eve of elections “it  would  be  wise  for  the  West  to  postpone  demands  to  Ukrainian  authorities  of  immediate  implementation  of  policies  that  divide  nation or  put  it  under  more  austerity. Importantly,  the  EU  and  US  decision  makers  should  not  allow Kremlin  to  turn  Ukrainian elections  into  referendum  about  different  peace  resolution  plans,  since neither  option  unites  the country”. The memo is expected to be published soon.

Also, Olexiy Haran with other scholars from Ukraine (Volodymyr Dubovyk, Volodymyr Kulyk and Volodymyr Ishchenko) participated on September 20 in the seminar at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). The goal of the seminar was to interact more closely with future diplomats being trained at FSI and leaving soon for positions at US embassies in the region.