Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
David J. Kramer: The Ukraine invasion – one year later
Cossacks hold Russian and Crimean flags during a rally marking the one-year anniversary of Crimea voting to leave Ukraine and join the Russian state in central Simferopol on March 16, 2015.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine posed the most serious challenge to European security in decades. In one stroke, he thumbed his nose at the Helsinki Accords of 1975, the Paris Charter of 1990, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, and other agreements and commitments that had kept the peace in Europe - with the exception of the Balkans - since the end of World War II. Suddenly, the post-Cold War order was torn to shreds, and many worried that if Putin’s brazen act was left unchallenged, other authoritarian regimes would think they, too, could get away with aggression against their neighbors.
