Four Years of War in Ukraine
A new analytical video series by ICEUR

February 24 marks four years since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Over this period, the war has shattered expectations of a quick outcome and become a key driver of change in the international order.

The ICEUR semester “War in Ukraine” began in February 2025, just ten days before the third anniversary of the war. Today, on the threshold of the fifth year, we are starting to publish selected highlights from those lectures on YouTube — not as hindsight reinterpretation, but as a time-stamped analytical snapshot.

🎥 Lecture #1 — Anatol Lieven
Why Russia Failed to Win a Quick War

British journalist and political analyst Anatol Lieven examines one of the central miscalculations of 2022: why expectations of a rapid Russian victory proved wrong in both the West and Russia itself. The lecture explores strategic illusions, urban warfare, and the political consequences of a prolonged conflict.

Four Years of War in Ukraine
An analytical video series by ICEUR

The war in Ukraine is often perceived as a sudden rupture. Yet many of the political and societal fault lines that made it possible had been forming long before 2022.

The ICEUR semester “War in Ukraine,” launched in February 2025, was dedicated to examining these longer-term processes, strategic miscalculations, and forecasting failures. Now, on the threshold of the fifth year of the war, we continue publishing selected lecture highlights on YouTube as a time-stamped analytical snapshot.

🎥 Lecture #2 — John Lough
Why the war began earlier than it seems

This lecture takes us back to 2004 and the Orange Revolution, when Ukrainian society openly asserted its commitment to an independent political path. That choice became a fundamental challenge to Kremlin assumptions and the starting point of a long-term confrontation.

The lecture focuses on:
— Ukrainian societal agency well before 2022
— Strategic miscalculations in Moscow
— The failure of attempts to externally control Ukraine
— How political choice evolved into sustained conflict

This lecture invites viewers to see the war not as a sudden crisis, but as the outcome of a prolonged political process.

Four Years of War in Ukraine
An analytical video series by ICEUR

As the war continues, attention increasingly shifts from battlefield developments to the systems of governance established in the occupied territories. Military control is only one layer; institutional integration is another.

The ICEUR semester “War in Ukraine,” launched in February 2025, examined not only military dynamics but also the political and administrative mechanisms shaping the conflict. Now, on the threshold of the fifth year of the war, we continue publishing selected lecture highlights on YouTube as a time-stamped analytical snapshot.

🎥 Lecture #3 —Nikolay Petrov. Russia’s Patronage System in the Occupied Regions

This lecture explores the Kremlin’s regional patronage system — a model first tested after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and expanded following 2022. Under this scheme, Russian regions are assigned responsibility for specific districts and municipalities in occupied Ukrainian territories.

The lecture focuses on:
— Lessons learned from Crimea
— The centralization of decision-making
— The role of Russian regions as “curators” of occupied areas
— The political logic of integration
— How institutional structures reinforce control

This lecture invites viewers to examine the war not only as a military conflict, but as a structured system of governance and long-term political consolidation.

Four Years of War in Ukraine
An analytical video series by ICEUR

As the war continues, February 24, 2022 is increasingly viewed not only as a geopolitical rupture, but as a moment of internal institutional shock within Russia itself. Beyond battlefield developments, the origins of the war reveal important insights into how strategic decisions are made inside the Russian political system.

The ICEUR course “War in Ukraine” examines not only military dynamics, but also the institutional, economic, and political mechanisms that shaped the launch of the full-scale invasion. As part of this analytical series, we continue publishing selected lecture fragments on YouTube as analytical snapshots.

🎥 Lecture #4. Fragment. — Vladislav Inozemtsev. The Internal Shock of February 24 (ссылка)

This video presents a fragment of a lecture by economist and political analyst Vladislav Inozemtsev, dedicated to one of the least discussed dimensions of the war’s beginning: the surprise it reportedly produced within Russia’s own pro-government elite.

According to the lecture, even key institutions — including the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance — were not fully prepared for a full-scale conventional invasion across a 1,300-kilometer front. Until the final days, many signals pointed toward a more limited scenario resembling the Crimea model: recognition and potential annexation of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics.”

The decision to launch a large-scale invasion marked a rupture with those expectations.

The lecture focuses on:
— Institutional unpreparedness for full-scale war
— The gap between political signaling and actual decision-making
— The personalization and centralization of power
— The economic and financial consequences of sudden escalation
— What this episode reveals about the nature of Russia’s political regime

This fragment invites viewers to reconsider February 24 not only as the start of a military campaign, but as an internal institutional moment that exposed the logic of power, secrecy, and centralized decision-making within the Russian system.

We are pleased to officially announce the start date of our upcoming course:

Mission Ready: Critical Skills for International Work in Crisis Environments

🗓 The program begins on 27 February.

This year’s course opens with a special introductory lecture by Christoph Bilban, representative of the Austrian Ministry of Defence.

Topic of the opening lecture:
Evolution of international organizations.
Their role in an increasingly complex global environment.

This is particularly good news for our participants.
Christoph Bilban brings deep institutional insight into how international organizations function from the inside — how mandates evolve, how political realities shape operational frameworks, and how crisis environments transform institutional behavior.

In a world where international missions face increasing uncertainty, fragmentation of alliances, and overlapping mandates, understanding the internal logic of organizations is not optional — it is essential.

Mission Ready is designed for professionals, analysts, and practitioners who aim to work — or already work — in international, humanitarian, diplomatic, or security environments.

Throughout the program, we focus on:
• strategic decision-making under uncertainty
• institutional dynamics in crisis settings
• operational constraints and political realities
• practical tools for navigating complex environments

If you are preparing for international field work — or seeking to deepen your analytical and practical understanding of crisis systems — this course is built for you.

We look forward to welcoming you on 27 February.

Four Years of War in Ukraine
An analytical video series by ICEUR

As the war in Ukraine continues, its deeper strategic roots are increasingly viewed not as a product of short-term political decisions, but as the result of long-standing geopolitical and imperial thinking. At the center of this logic lies Ukraine.

The ICEUR analytical series examines the war not only through military events, but through the strategic, institutional, and historical frameworks that shaped it. As part of this series, we continue publishing selected lecture fragments on YouTube as analytical snapshots.

🎥 Lecture #6. Fragment. — Robert Müller
Ukraine’s Strategic Importance: Why Russia Without Ukraine Is Not an Empire

This video presents a fragment of a lecture by Robert Müller, Austrian Ambassador to Ukraine, reflecting on why Ukraine occupies a central place in Russian strategic thinking.

The lecture revisits one of the most frequently cited geopolitical formulations — that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire — and places it in a broader historical and institutional context. The discussion traces this logic from the Tsarist period through the Soviet Union and into post–Cold War Russia, emphasizing continuity rather than rupture.

The lecture focuses on:
— Ukraine’s demographic and political weight in the Soviet system
— The persistence of imperial strategic logic beyond specific leaders
— Why Ukraine is perceived as a structural pivot, not a peripheral issue
— The significance of 2014 and the qualitative escalation in 2022
— What this reveals about Russia’s understanding of power and status

This fragment invites viewers to look beyond immediate battlefield developments and consider the deeper strategic assumptions that continue to shape the war — and the European security order more broadly.

The Second ICEUR Semester — Successfully Completed!

We are truly delighted to share that the diploma ceremony for graduates of the course “Regional Impact of the New World Order” has taken place.

This marks the second semester of the ICEUR School of Political Forecasting — and we are genuinely proud that everything came together successfully. Finally! Despite a complex international environment, demanding schedules, and participants joining from different time zones, the program was completed and our graduates received their well-deserved diplomas.

Diplomas were awarded on behalf of the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs by Thomas Mühlmann, Head of the Department for Eastern Europe and Turkey.

Diplomas were also presented by Vice President of ICEUR and Founder of the ICEUR School, Prof. Hans-Georg Heinrich, who emphasized the importance of analytical rigor and probabilistic thinking in times of global turbulence.

For us, this is not just the end of a semester — it is another step forward in the development of ICEUR as an international educational platform.

▶️ The ceremony video is available hier.

Military Diplomacy and the Return of Regional Wars

At first glance, it may seem that we have entered an era in which the world’s superpowers can act with near impunity. Yet the ongoing military intervention in Iran shows that even the most powerful states operate within significant constraints.

1️⃣ Regional limits

The conflict is likely to remain regional.
Russia, though formally aligned with Tehran, lacks both the capacity — and perhaps the willingness — to provide meaningful support. Moscow may quietly hope for a geopolitical trade-off — Ukraine in exchange for Iran — rather than risk deeper entanglement.

China, meanwhile, continues to cultivate the image of a peace-loving great power while applying gradual pressure on Taiwan. Neither Moscow nor Beijing appears inclined to escalate the situation into a global confrontation.

At the same time, the strike on Iran may embolden other regional actors. If Washington no longer prioritizes its role as a global peacemaker, long-suppressed rivalries elsewhere could resurface.

We may witness multiple, parallel regional conflicts — not a single world war, but simultaneous expressions of a more permissive strategic climate.

2️⃣ Temporal constraints

Time is another limiting factor.

A prolonged military engagement would weigh heavily on domestic politics. No U.S. administration can comfortably approach midterm elections amid an open-ended conflict.

At the same time, political leadership may feel compelled to demonstrate a more favorable outcome than what critics once labeled “the worst treaty ever” — referring to the nuclear agreement concluded under the Barack Obama administration.

3️⃣ Limits of scale

Scale presents its own constraints.

With the United States unwilling to deploy large numbers of ground troops — and with “system change” declared as the objective — Washington and Israel would have to rely heavily on internal unrest within Iran.

Yet this reliance inherently limits the use of overwhelming force:
a reckless bombing campaign would undermine the very domestic uprising required for political transformation.

Conversely, Iran’s capacity to inflict sustained strategic damage on Israel — let alone the United States — remains limited. This asymmetry further reinforces the conflict’s contained character.

4️⃣ A shifting global framework

On the global level, the normative framework of international politics is changing.

The post–Cold War aspiration toward peaceful conflict resolution has lost much of its traction. In its place emerges a form of military diplomacy — where force is used not as a last resort, but as a calibrated instrument of negotiation.

The emerging order is not one of unlimited superpower dominance.
Rather, it is an order of constrained coercion — where power is exercised within political, regional, and strategic boundaries.

🎥 “No one wants to see bombs, but there was no other option.”

We are publishing an excerpt from an interview with Hossein Kermani — a researcher in political communication and professor at the University of Vienna.

In this video, Kermani reflects on the political crisis in Iran and explains why, in his view, many Iranians no longer believe that peaceful reforms are possible.

According to him, Iranian society has spent years trying different paths to achieve change — from public protests and civic activism to participation in elections. However, the systematic suppression of even small demonstrations and the continued rejection of reform demands have led many people to feel that there are almost no alternatives left.

Kermani also discusses the possible consequences of the current crisis and the chances for political change in the country.

Hossein Kermani is a professor at the University of Vienna and a lecturer at the ICEUR School.
He will also participate in the new ICEUR summer semester starting in late April.

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to present our upcoming Spring semester:

Battlefield Diplomacy
The Global Impact of the Ukraine War

The program will begin in just three weeks — on April 20.
As always, the course will be conducted in two languages: Russian and English.

Meet the lecturers
Show Schedule

____________________
- For those who may find it difficult to pay the full amount at once, the fee can be split into two installments without losing the discount.

- Students receive a 50% discount.

The upcoming ICEUR Spring Course explores the origins of the emerging world order and seeks to identify its key structures and dynamics. Responding to growing global uncertainty, the course follows the ICEUR School philosophy by combining empirical, real-world analysis with Bayesian reasoning as a practical, computer-assisted approach to decision-making under uncertainty.

Participants will be introduced to the AI-supported platform Bayes Fusion GeNIe 5.0, which enables transparent, structured, and defensible modeling of complex systems. The software is designed to handle both uncertainty and complexity while remaining accessible—even for students without a background in advanced mathematics.

The course is open to anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of global transformation processes and in uncovering the underlying logic behind what often appears to be chaotic or irrational developments.

Battlefield Diplomacy. The Global Impact of the Ukraine War

This is not just a course on the Ukraine war.
It’s about the new logic of global politics.

European education — no relocation.
Analysis, forecasting, real experts.

2 months — and you’re inside the international environment.

📍 Starts April 20
👉 https://iceur-school.at/courses/battlefielddiplomacy/en

Modern diplomacy no longer happens in meeting rooms and formal receptions — everything has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Today, the Prime Minister of Hungary, a country that is part of both the EU and NATO, can call the President of Russia in the middle of the war in Ukraine and offer cooperation — and such decisions have direct political consequences, including the loss of power.

Understand probable futures as history unfolds. Examine how military activities and carrot-and-stick interaction are merging into a new kind of diplomacy, and learn how artificial intelligence can enhance your own analytical work.
The ICEUR-School Spring Course begins in one week. Secure your place now.

War and Propaganda | Dr. Stephen Norris

A short interview with Stephen Norris, Professor of History, on his research and upcoming lecture at ICEUR.

In this conversation, he explains how propaganda evolves — from the Russian Empire to the Soviet period and modern Russia — and why cinema and cultural narratives play a key role in shaping political thinking and war.

📅 Lecture — April 29 as part of the course
“Battlefield Diplomacy:
The Global Impact of the Ukraine War“

Could the outcome of the election in Hungary have been anticipated?
From intuition to probabilistic modeling with GeNIe 5.0

- If you look only at polls - no.
- If you look at the system of factors - yes.

Economy, candidate strength, mobilization, turnout, urban shifts -
each of these signals alone explains nothing.

But together, they change the probability.

This is the logic of Bayes:
we don’t guess outcomes - we update our estimates.

At some point, “unlikely”
becomes “most likely”.

And that is no longer intuition — it’s a model.

Can Forecasting Be Taught?

Effective forecasting rests on two essential pillars:
human judgment and computational modeling -
what one might call brainware and software,
or more simply, flesh and skeleton.

Neither is sufficient on its own.
It is their interaction that produces robust foresight.

In our programs, the “flesh” is embodied by an international faculty of leading experts.
Their disciplinary diversity fosters rigorous debate, critical reflection, and a form of structured collective intelligence that challenges assumptions and refines insight.

This human expertise is paired with an analytical “skeleton”:
- GeNIe Modeler, developed by BayesFusion.

This technology is used by organizations such as RAND, Google,
and multiple Ministries of Foreign Affairs across the English-speaking world.

It enables participants to construct, test, and refine probabilistic models of complex systems.

We have applied this tool extensively in our own forecasting work and are officially mandated by BayesFusion to integrate it into our training.

What sets our programs apart is their strong practical orientation:
Participants do not merely learn analytical frameworks - they actively build and stress-test models, bridging theory and application.

The result is a distinctive learning experience that transforms analysis into actionable foresight.

Dealing with a Messy World

We tend to believe that a once orderly and reliable world is now coming apart before our eyes. Planning and forecasting seem increasingly elusive — anything, it appears, can happen at any moment. Even weather and climate feel less predictable than they once did. In such a context, offering training in political forecasting can seem close to a mission impossible.

And yet, while the amount of uncertainty — of “noise” — may well have increased, the fundamentals of practical reasoning have not.

We still act under uncertainty in familiar ways. We assume it will rain later today and, encouraged by the forecast, take an umbrella. We believe that the Fidesz government under Viktor Orbán may be losing its capacity to deliver, and we find support for this belief in opinion polls. In both cases, we act not on certainty, but on what appears most likely.

This is precisely where modelling tools such as GeNIe 5.0 come into play. They do not eliminate uncertainty; rather, they help us structure it. By systematically confronting assumptions with data, they allow us to refine our judgments, update our expectations, and — crucially — learn from past mistakes.

GeNIe 5.0 is neither a magic wand nor a crystal ball — and certainly not a prophecy carved in the stone of Maya temples. But it does offer something more realistic and ultimately more valuable: a way to reintroduce a measure of order into a noisy world — not by denying uncertainty, but by reasoning through it.

Bayesian Reasoning: How an Obscure Formula Transformed Modern Statistics

Thomas Bayes (1701–1761) was an English cleric and mathematician who formulated a deceptively simple rule: how to update prior beliefs in light of new evidence. This idea - now known as Bayesian inference - remained largely overlooked for more than two centuries.

To see why this idea is so counterintuitive - and so powerful in practice - consider the following example - "What we miss when estimating probabilities?"

Only in the late 20th and early 21st centuries did statisticians and scientists across disciplines fully recognize its analytical power. The recent surge in machine learning and the development of Large Language Models have further accelerated this shift, placing Bayesian thinking at the center of modern data analysis.

Today, Bayesian methods are widely used alongside traditional frequentist approaches, with new applications emerging continuously. Their appeal lies not only in mathematical elegance but also in conceptual clarity: Bayesian models explicitly represent uncertainty and update beliefs as new information becomes available.

For political scientists, this approach is particularly valuable. Large, clean datasets are often unavailable, and researchers must frequently draw inferences from limited or incomplete observations. Bayesian modeling allows even small amounts of data to meaningfully refine prior assumptions.

Moreover, Bayesian frameworks distinguish between different layers of uncertainty. They capture uncertainty about outcomes - such as the states of a discrete or continuous variable - and also deeper uncertainty about the underlying probabilities themselves, for example through the Dirichlet distribution.

The resulting models are both powerful and instructive. They provide a structured way to reason under uncertainty - precisely the kind of challenge that analysts in politics, economics, and global affairs face on a daily basis.

King Charles’s Answer to the “New Uncertainty”

At the opening of his recent address to the U.S. Congress, King Charles III framed the present moment as one of “great uncertainty,” posing it as a defining challenge for the international community.

His response, characteristically British in tone, drew on long-standing traditions and constitutional heritage - anchored in documents such as the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights.

Addressing what he termed the “citadel of democracy,” he appealed to shared values while carefully avoiding direct criticism of the incumbent U.S. administration - despite its evident willingness to depart from established democratic norms in pursuit of sweeping domestic and global change.

Viewed through a Bayesian lens, however, the King’s implicit hope for a return to traditional patterns appears contingent on a convergence of unlikely conditions: a U.S. government recommitted to constitutional restraint, a Supreme Court prepared to check radical reforms, and a Congress capable of rediscovering meaningful bipartisan common ground. The joint probability of these developments is, at best, low.

On the international stage, the situation is even more intractable. Structural shifts have already taken place. No U.S. administration has managed to curb Russia’s enduring drive for strategic security, to halt China’s incremental expansion through indirect means, or to produce a lasting resolution to conflicts in the Near East. These are not transient disruptions but entrenched dynamics.

Paradoxically, the near-impossibility of the King’s preferred scenario may itself reduce uncertainty. If a return to the old equilibrium is highly improbable, then analytical focus shifts toward identifying the more plausible trajectories. The real question is no longer whether the past can be restored, but which new configurations of power, norms, and alliances are most likely to emerge - and how they will redefine the global order.

Two days after Armenia's parliamentary elections, ICEUR School conducted an interview with Hayk Mamijanyan, leader of the "I Have Honor" parliamentary faction.

The conversation explores the election results, the OSCE assessment of the vote, the prospects for Armenia's European integration, and one of the most controversial questions in Armenian politics today: Is Armenia genuinely moving toward Europe, or does the rhetoric of a "European future" conceal a very different geopolitical direction?

Mamijanyan also explains why he does not consider Nikol Pashinyan a genuinely pro-European politician and shares his assessment of Armenia's future after the elections.

Watch the interview excerpt on our YouTube channel.

We continue publishing excerpts from interviews with Armenian politicians recorded by ICEUR School in the days following Armenia's parliamentary elections.

In this new excerpt, former Ambassador-at-Large of Armenia Edmon Marukyan explains how, in his view, the ruling party managed to win over the country's pro-European electorate.

Marukyan argues that voters were promised a path toward the European Union, yet after the election the government no longer speaks about leaving the Eurasian Union and has no realistic prospect of joining the EU.

He also explains why he believes comparisons between Armenia and Moldova are misleading and describes pro-European rhetoric as a key instrument of the election campaign.

Watch the interview excerpt on our YouTube channel: