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Sergey Aksyonov
The current prime minister of the Republic of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov is a key figure espousing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Born on 26 November 1972 in Bălți in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, Aksyonov holds extremely pro-Russian views and even suggested that he will remove Ukrainian as an official language in Crimea upon accession.
He began his political career in 2008 when he joined the Russian Community of Crimea. He was part of the Russian Unity Party between 2008 and 2009 and became its leader in 2010. In 2010, he was elected to the Supreme Council of Crimea (ie : the Parliament) despite his party receiving just 3 seats out of a 100 and less than 4% of the votes.
On February 27 2014, unidentified armed gunmen seized control of key Crimean administrative and military buildings, including the Crimean parliament building. The Parliament voted unanimously to appoint Aksyonov as the new Prime Minister of Crimea and to hold a referendum on Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation. Thus, Aksyonov found himself the leader of one of today’s most volatile territories despite having less than 4 years of experience in Parliament. He was recognised as the legitimate leader of Crimea by Russian President Putin on Mar 4 2014.
However, Aksyonov has a shady past with links to organised crime, gaining the nickname ‘Goblin’ for his activities in the notorious Salem gang.
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Bashar Al Assad (1965- )
Born on September 11th, 1965, Bashar Al Assad is the second son of the Hafez Al Assad. When his father died, Bashar Al Assad succeeded him to the presidency of Syria. He was considered a younger generation of Arab leaders, who would bring change to Syria and liberalize his father’s iron-rule regime. But although he did modernize a bit Syria, he violently put down his opponents and any uprising against his government. His bloody repression of the Arab Springs highly contributed to trigger the Syrian Civil War that still endures today.
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Gamsakhurdia, Zviad (1939-1993)
Zviad Gamsakhurdia was born in Tbilisi (Georgia) on March 31, 1939 and died in trouble circumstances during his time in office, on December 31, 1993.He was officially the president of Georgia since a few months after its dependence (May 26, 1991) until the coup d’état of Eduard Shevardnadze on December 22, 1992. After the coup d’état, he was in exile but still considered himself president of the country.Son of a distinguished family, his father was a Georgian Academician and he received an excellent education. He was trained in philology and began a professional career as a translator and literacy critic. He translated books of William Shakespeare, Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde. However, what he was most interested in before its presidency was human rights and its respect. He is the first Georgian member of Amnesty International and also the first Georgian member of the International Society for Human Rights.He was a strong Georgian dissident and fought against Soviet supremacy over its country and its citizens until he managed to bring Georgia to its independence.Gamsakhurdia found the Society of Saint Ilia the Righteous (SSIR) at the end of the eighties, and this movement was a combination of a religious society and a political party. He was preparing his entry in politics. During the first democratic multiparty elections of Georgia on October 1990, its party won 64% of the vote and shortly after the independence of Georgia (that they made occur) on April 9th, 1991 he was elected president of the Republic of Georgia in May 1991, with 86.5% of the vote, the turnout being of over 83%.However, he had serious issues with minorities, not enough heard and represented. This led to demonstrations and to a serious will of independence of Abkhazians and Ossetians. Gamsakhurdia declared that the Ossetian separatists were “direct agents of the Kremlin, its tools and terrorists”. He thus believed that it was a reason to use force and disrespect human rights in this region during a while.His opponents accused him of being a dictator and he is finally overturned by Eduard Shevardnadze on November 6th 1993, despite its resistance during a few months. (LJ)
George H.W. Bush (1924-…) was the 41st president of the United States. Amongst other public positions held are 43rd Vice-President of the US, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Chief of the US Liaison Office in China, Chair of the Republican National Committee, US Ambassador to the UN, Congressman from Texas 7th district. After losing the re election in 1993, Bush retired with his wife in Texas.
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Hafez Al-Assad (1930-2000)
He was an air force officer who served as Syria’s President for nearly three decades (1971-2000). Although he was able to modernize and stabilize Syria, he was widely criticized for his strong intolerance of unrest, which has led to thousands of deaths among the Syrian people. He implemented some of the Soviet model’s features such as a single-party, a police state and several intelligence agencies. When he died, his son, Bashar Al Assad became president.
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Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovitch (1952-…)
Born on October 7, 1952 in Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and the current President of the Russian Federation, holding the office since 2012. He entered politics in 1991 in his hometown. When he moved to Moscow in 1996, he joined President Boris Yeltsin’s administration, rising quickly through the ranks and becoming Acting president on 1999, when Yeltsin resigned. Officially elected President of the Russian Federation in 2000, Putin won a second mandate of four years in 2004. In 2008, because of constitutionally mandated term limits, he was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term. He was appointed Prime Minister by Dmitry Medvedev, who won the 2008 presidential election. In 2011, presidential terms were extended and Putin announced he would seek a third term as presidential and won the 2012 presidential election. Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian president. He strengthened the powers of intelligence services and established the control of the State over the media. However, he implemented economic reforms, which allowed Russia to exit the crisis. He also succeeded to extend the Russian influence internationally. (JL)
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Saakashvili, Mikhail (1967-…)
Born on December 21, 1967 in Tbilissi (Georgia), Mikhail Saakashvili was president of Georgia between June 2004 and November 2013.Mikhail Saakashvili graduated from the Law School of the Institute of International Relations in Ukraine. After his graduate studies in France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States, he worked in a law firm between 1993 and 1995. In 1995, he decided to return to Georgia encouraged by the chairman of the Union of Citizens of Georgia (SMK), Zurab Zhvania. With the ticket of the SMK, he reached the parliament after 1995 election where he became the chairman of the Legal Affairs committee, promoting deep reforms of the state.After being the president of SMK’s faction in the parliament, he was appointed in 2000 Minister of Justice enabling considerable improvement of prison conditions. However, Saakachvili resigned in 2001 as a consequence of his opposition to the president of the time, Eduard Shevardnadze. As a new opposing leader, he created his own movement, United National Movement (UNM).In November 2003, Shevardnadze’s block proclaimed its victory on the presidential election. The result was contested and massive protests and demonstrations were launched under the leadership of Saakashvili, Zhavnia and Burdjanadze against the perceived falsification. As a result, a new election was held in 2004 where Saakachvili replaced Shevardnadze for the presidency. The new president set territorial priorities to preserve the national unity against the separatists, engendering tensions with Putin’s Russia supporting South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Despite some protest in the country against Saakachvili civil rights abuses, he was reelected in January 2008. This reelection gave rise to new tensions that led to the violent five-day war between Georgia and separatist provinces supported by Moscow in August 7th 2008.On the August 12th, a ceasefire was concluded. Nevertheless, the Georgian president faced harsh criticism from opposing groups who disapproved his strategy in a conflict that Georgia could not have won. Demonstrations demanding Saakachvili’s resignation spread throughout the country in the year 2009.Finally, the Georgian Dream opposition movement won the parliamentary elections in 2012. Saakachvili left the presidency a year later after having fulfilled two presidential terms. (RB)
Shevardnadze, Eduard (1928-2014)
Eduard Shevardnadze was a Georgian politician and diplomat. He was born on January 25, 1928 and died on July 7, 2014. Even though his mother was firmly against communism, he became a big figure of extreme-left parties in the Soviet Union and in Georgia during the 20th century. He joined the GPC in 1948, aged 20 and then rose steadily through the ranks of the Komsomol (also known as the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League).He significantly raised the prosperity of the Republic of Georgia leading reformist economic policies, which brought him to Gorbachev’s attention in Moscow. The latter named him as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 and he steered the Soviet Union in from the cold during his five and a half years as Mikahil Gorbavhev’s foreign minister. Shevardnadze was fighting for the end of the east-west confrontation and declared at the Malta Summit in December 1989, in front of President George Bush Sr that “the Soviet Union no longer regards the US as an enemy”. However, in 1991, he left the foreign ministry and eventually the party in the Soviet Union as he were in trouble with Gorbachev, being too conservative and too radical according to him. Shevardnadze decided to return to Georgia, his land mother, having decided that he will be the one to succeed in ending the economic and political chaos Zviad Gamsakhurdia has put the country in. He thus led a coup d’état against the government of Gamsakhurdia. He is finally officially and democratically elected president of Georgia in 1995. Nevertheless, he was forced to let the power in 2003, after the series of protests and demonstrations known as the Rose Revolution, who followed accusation of fraud during the 2003 legislative elections. After this failure, Shevardnadze lived hidden until his death. He wrote his memoires and “could not hide his disappointment and his sense of failure both in Georgia and also in the collapse of the dreams for a brave new world through the territory of the former Soviet Union.” (LJ)
Sprout, Harold and Margaret (The Sprouts)
The Sprouts were pioneers of contemporary Foreign Policy Analysis. The couple were the first to introduce the idea of the ‘psycho-milieu’, and contributed the idea that environment is a factor in the decision-making process.
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Xi Jinping
Born in Beijing 1953, he is the son of revolutionary veteran Xi Zhongxun, one of the Communist Party’s founding fathers. At a young age, he was sent to work in the countryside where he worked alongside villagers. He was named chief of Shanghai in 2007 and in 2008, became the Communist Party’s vice-president. He is seen as a pro-business politician who has zero-tolerance towards corrupt officials. In 2012, he assumed the leadership of the Communist party and became president of the People’s Republic of China. He is also the chairman of the Central Military Commission.
Understanding Decisions 