title: Russia, the Black Sea region and security after the invasion of Ukraine
abstract: The Georgian War of 2008 and the subsequent crisis in 2014 between Ukraine and Russia over Crimea provoked security concerns about whether Russia and the West are heading towards a new Cold War. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 made this all the more apparent. Answering this question is not as clear as it was between 1945 and 1990. The original Cold War was about a clear ideological competition between capitalist and socialist blocs that took place under a bipolar nuclear balan