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Dirk Mattheisen is a writer and blogger on political economy with a focus on European affairs. He is also an independent consultant on institutional governance of international economic and financial institutions. Dirk Mattheisen is a former Assistant Corporate Secretary of The World Bank Group.
In a recent article, “Russia Increasingly Treats Georgia As Its Prospective Satellite,” Vasili Rukhadze, political analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, writes that Georgia has recently experienced a “heightened...
As Russia approaches its 2018 presidential election, dissent in Russia has taken an ominous turn. A wide-spread truckers’ strike against road tolls pits the working class against the oligarchs. An unexpectedly large “youth...
The photo above says it all. Soviet era façades. The blonde in an expensive ski jacket. The bloodied body on the sidewalk next to a luxury car. It’s the stuff of post-Soviet pulp novels. On Thursday, Denys Voronenkov, a Russian...
To hear Marine Le Pen talk, sanctions against Russia don’t work, and she stands a decent chance of being elected president of France. She has company here and there in odd places. The deputy speaker of the Serbian...
The nationalization on December 18 of Privatbank, Ukraine’s largest bank by assets, opens a new and promising chapter in the reform of Ukraine. Privatbank’s nationalization due to a slow boiling insolvency crisis that...
Almost unnoticed, economic growth in Ukraine has turned positive and the pace of growth has quickened. This is important not only for the material well-being of Ukrainians but because more than anything else economic growth promises...
At mid-year the Russian economy may be going up—or down. In what amounts to an ongoing ritual, in a June 17 interview President Putin sounded positive about the direction of the Russian economy. He is quoted as saying,...
The return of Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine is an inflection point in the Russian-Ukrainian political and military – Ed. conflict. It is the moment when Putin tacitly acknowledged that the cost for Russia of the Russian-Ukrainian...
The Curious Case of Benjamin Russia At his annual phone-in event with the Russian people on April 14, President Putin struck an optimistic note and projected that Russian GDP would contract by only -0.3% in 2016 and would grow 1.4% in...
1. Exotic means of murdering The most dramatic insight is the large number of Kremlin critics murdered by exotic poisons and other means. That the Kremlin is accused of murdering critics of President Putin is not new, but the...
First stereotype: Ukrainians are very poor Some Europeans viewed Ukraine as extremely poor. Many Ukrainian refugees were surprised to learn that. “They perceived us almost like we are cave people who do not know and have not seen...
