Conflict Zone from the LSE

In this episode of the LSE Conflict Zone podcast, host Maliek Banat talks to Brian Milakovsky, an associate researcher with the PeaceRep-Ukraine programme and the lead author of a recent report, Critical Raw Materials, Local Content Policy and Ukraine’s Economic Recovery and Ukraine programme director Luke Cooper about the turbulent current conjuncture in Ukraine. With protests, scandal and geopolitical stress intensifying they discuss how major stakeholders are envisioning Ukraine's economic recovery and reconstruction.

This podcast series is part of the Conflict and Civicness Research Group. All episodes are available here. 

Producer: Maliek Banat

In this special episode, Dr Luke Cooper, the director of our Ukraine research programme sits down with the host to unpack how the war in Ukraine is transofrming state capacity, fuelling economic strength and redefining the path to peace in non military terms. With shifting alliances and increasing domestic pressure, will economics determine the endgame more than firepower?

With the return of Donald Trump in the White House – and his insistence that Kyiv and Moscow strike a peace deal “in 24 hours – huge uncertainty now hangs over the future of Ukraine’s democracy and freedom. In this podcast, Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams discuss the huge challenges and hardships Ukraine has experienced in the war, drawing on insights from Luke’s recent visit to Ukraine. They are joined by Ukrainian academic Yuliya Bidenko from Karazin University in Kharkiv.

The outlook on lasting peace in Ethiopia has been grim since the cessation of active hostilities in November of last year. A peace agreement between the Tigray’s People Liberation Front, or the TPLF, and the Federal Government in Ethiopia has led to significant political concessions from the Tigrayans but ultimately falls short of resolving the underlying tensions.
In this episode we explain how the mode of transactional politics has come to dominate the dynamics inside Ethiopia under the current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. We contrast the current political crisis with previous episodes of social unrest and violent change such as the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974. We argue that the ongoing marketisation of political institutions undermines not only the legitimacy of the peace agreement, but the overall monopoly on violence of the state.
Featuring Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation (WPF) and Research Director at the Conflict Research Programme at the LSE, and M

In the aftermath of the Republic’s collapse, a lack of shared understanding of policy priorities and effective civic interventions is impeding development of pathways toward stability for Afghanistan. The situation has since deteriorated across all scores of human security under the Taliban, with concurrent human rights, humanitarian, and political crises.

In this episode we look at how narratives of state failure, shaped largely by Western expertise, have overlooked and undermined the progress made by Afghans in healthcare, education, and economic stabilization. We argue that the outsized nature of the international intervention in Afghanistan, alongside a top-down approach to conflict resolution, has contributed to a misrepresentation of on-the-ground realities.

Featuring Marika Theros and Sahar Halaimzai, both policy fellows at the LSE Conflict and Civicness Research Group (CCRG) and the co-directors of the Peacerep’s Afghanistan Research Network. Marika and Sahar in 2021 worked together on the creation and realization of the ‘trilateral 1.5 track dialogue’ at the Atlantic Council, bringing together US, European and Afghan stakeholders to develop an inclusive and longer-term strategic outlook on stability in Afghanistan.