title: The United States, Russia, and Ukraine
abstract: In 2014, the relationship between the United States and Russia, and between Europe and Russia, hit a post-Cold War low. Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to the imposition of economic sanctions by the United States and the European Union and to countersanctions by Russia. Paradoxically, leaders in other states sometimes agreed that the spread of democracy was good for the United States; for that reason, they saw democratization as a geopolitical threat as much as a matter of domestic politics. Th