Columbia Professors Help Illuminate the Crisis in Ukraine

For months the crisis in Ukraine has left the media scrambling to explain newsworthy developments that seem to unfold on a daily if not hourly basis. What to make of Russia's annexation of Crimea in March? How to explain Russian President Vladimir Putin's motives? Are Russia and the West suddenly headed toward a new Cold War? Ever since the anti-government protests broke out late last year in Ukraine's capital city of Kiev, many journalists in the U.S. and abroad have turned to Columbia's faculty to provide insight and essential context on the tangled history and politics of the region. With its long history of academic expertise on Russia and the region, specifically at the Harriman Institute, which focuses on Russian, Eurasian and East European studies, Columbia's faculty have produced a stream of opinion pieces and blog posts for The New York Times , The Washington Post and other publications; and they have been ed on radio and television programs ranging from The Charlie Rose Show on PBS to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart . The crisis in Ukraine "will likely mean postponing structural economic reforms and improvements in governance" in Russia - Timothy M. Frye , director of the Harriman Institute, spoke about Russia's annexation of Crimea on Bloomberg TV. Frye, the Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy, noted that some 40 percent of Crimea's population is not ethnically Russian and wanted to stay independent.