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As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

editor’s picks

Zelenskyy’s spring 2020 purge targets reformers

UkraineAlert Jul 1, 2025

Putin’s escalating air offensive is overwhelming Ukraine’s defenses

By Mykola Bielieskov

Russian aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities are expanding rapidly and killing growing numbers of civilians. Kyiv must urgently find technological solutions to defend against Putin’s escalating air offensive, writes Mykola Bielieskov.
Conflict Defense Industry
Zelenskyy’s spring 2020 purge targets reformers

UkraineAlert Jun 23, 2025

‘All of Ukraine is ours’: Putin’s Russian imperialism is now on full display

By Peter Dickinson

Putin declared last week that “all of Ukraine is ours.” The Kremlin dictator’s revealing comments highlight the resurgent Russian imperialism driving Europe’s largest invasion since WWII, writes Peter Dickinson.
Conflict Disinformation
Zelenskyy’s spring 2020 purge targets reformers

UkraineAlert Jun 12, 2025

Putin’s peace plan is a blueprint for the end of Ukrainian statehood

By Tetiana Kotelnykova

Russia’s peace plan sends a clear signal that Moscow wants to erase Ukraine as a state and as a nation. If Western leaders wish to avoid this catastrophic outcome, they must convince Putin that the alternative to a negotiated peace is a Russian defeat, writes Tetiana Kotelnykova.
Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

Latest analysis

UkraineAlert

May 21, 2025

Putin aims to destroy Ukraine and has zero interest in a compromise peace

By Peter Dickinson

Russia’s ongoing campaign to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation is taking place in front of the watching world and makes a complete mockery of US-led efforts to broker some kind of compromise peace, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert

May 20, 2025

US-Ukraine minerals deal creates potential for economic and security benefits

By Svitlana Kovalchuk

The recently signed US-Ukrainian minerals deal places bilateral ties on a new footing and creates opportunities for long-term strategic partnership, writes Svitlana Kovalchuk.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert

May 20, 2025

How to prevent Ukraine’s booming defense sector from fueling global insecurity

By Vitaliy Goncharuk

With the Ukrainian defense sector experiencing years of unprecedented growth in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion, it is important to prevent Ukraine’s innovative military technologies from fueling a new wave of international instability, writes Vitaliy Goncharuk.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert

May 15, 2025

Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukrainian civilians must not go unpunished

By Anastasiya Donets, Susan H. Farbstein 

Holding Russia legally accountable for the ongoing air offensive against Ukraine’s civilian population is particularly important as this form of total war looks set to make a return, write Anastasiya Donets and Susan H. Farbstein. 

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert

May 15, 2025

Ukraine’s vibrant civil society wants to be heard during peace talks

By Ana Lejava

While officials in Moscow, Washington, Brussels, and Kyiv discuss technicalities and potential concessions, members of Ukraine’s vibrant civil society are attempting to define the contours of a lasting and meaningful peace, writes Ana Lejava.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert

May 13, 2025

How much longer will Putin be allowed to continue stalling for time?

By Peter Dickinson

President Trump has made a legitimate effort to broker a generous peace, but the time has now come to acknowledge that Putin is not negotiating in good faith and will only respond to the language of strength, writes Peter Dickinson.

France Germany

UkraineAlert

May 13, 2025

Drone superpower: Ukrainian wartime innovation offers lessons for NATO

By David Kirichenko

Today’s Ukraine is now a drone superpower with an innovative domestic defense industry that can provide its NATO allies with important lessons in the realities of twenty-first century warfare, writes David Kirichenko.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert

May 8, 2025

Russia’s coming summer offensive could be deadliest of the entire war

By Mykola Bielieskov

As the US-led peace initiative continues to falter, the unfolding summer campaigning season in Ukraine promises to be among the bloodiest of the entire war, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict European Union

UkraineAlert

May 7, 2025

Putin’s parade cynically exploits WWII to justify his own criminal invasion

By Peter Dickinson

Putin is expected to use this week’s Victory Day parade marking 80 years since the defeat of Hitler to legitimize his current invasion of Ukraine. But if anyone is guilty of echoing the crimes of the Nazis, it is Putin himself, writes Peter Dickinson.

Brazil China

UkraineAlert

May 6, 2025

Putin is escalating the war in Ukraine. He will not stop until he is stopped.

By Alyona Nevmerzhytska

Today, Ukrainians are paying a terrible price for the West’s reluctance to confront Russia. If Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, many other countries will also count the cost of this failure, writes Alyona Nevmerzhytska.

Conflict European Union
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spotlight

Resilience in the face of adversity

Ukraine’s transformation

Ukraine has moved tentatively toward an open society and market economy since independence. The country has held several democratic elections and made halting progress in addressing corruption and state control in its economy. Since the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Ukraine has undertaken significant governance and economic reform and moved decisively toward a Europe-Atlantic foreign policy. Since 2022, Ukraine has resiliently continued to advance some reforms despite fighting for its very existence against the full-scale Russian invasion.

Learn more about Ukraine
Zelenskyy’s spring 2020 purge targets reformers

UkraineAlert Dec 5, 2024

Ukraine’s entrepreneurial class can drive the country’s economic recovery

The Ukrainian SME sector has demonstrated remarkable wartime resilience and is poised to be at the forefront of efforts to create a modern, innovative, postwar economy, writes Anton Waschuk.

Read More
Zelenskyy’s spring 2020 purge targets reformers

UkraineAlert Oct 1, 2024

Ukraine needs international investors to maintain defense tech momentum

By Mykhailo Fedorov

Ukraine’s rapidly expanding defense tech sector can play a game-changing role in the war against Russia but Ukrainian companies need international investment, writes Ukraine’s Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov.
Artificial Intelligence Conflict
Zelenskyy’s spring 2020 purge targets reformers

UkraineAlert Jun 13, 2024

Ukraine officially embraces English as historic westward pivot continues

By Oleksiy Goncharenko

By officially embracing English, Ukrainians aim to support their country’s historic pivot away from Moscow and return to the European community of nations, writes Oleksiy Goncharenko.
Civil Society Conflict

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert

May 12, 2020

Zelenskyy’s spring 2020 purge targets reformers

By Victor Tregubov

Ukraine's President Zelenskyy won election one year ago by promising to end decades of government corruption, but a spring 2020 purge of leading Ukrainian reformers raises grave doubts over the country's future direction.

Democratic Transitions Rule of Law

UkraineAlert

May 11, 2020

Enough already

By Melinda Haring

There are other troubling signs on the horizon. Reformers in Kyiv worry that a revanche is underway and civil service, medical, anti-corruption, and fiscal reforms are all under attack.

Political Reform Rule of Law

UkraineAlert

May 9, 2020

Time for Europe to stop fighting over World War II

By Nataliya Popovych and Volodymyr Sheiko

As the world marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Second World War, the conflict continues to loom large in the global imagination but there is no consensus about the conflict in Europe, creating challenges for the future of European integration.

Europe & Eurasia European Union

UkraineAlert

May 7, 2020

US accuses Russia of “falsifying WWII history”

By Peter Dickinson

A strongly-worded new US joint statement issued together with foreign ministers from across Central and Eastern Europe takes aim at Russian attempts to rewrite history and sanitize the Soviet role in WWII.

Central Europe Disinformation

UkraineAlert

May 7, 2020

Putin has hijacked WWII to justify Russian aggression

By Solomiia Bobrovska

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia's annual Victory Day holiday has morphed from a solemn WWII memorial honoring Soviet losses into a grandiose nationalistic celebration of Russia's return to the world stage.

Nationalism Russia

UkraineAlert

May 7, 2020

Putin woos Trump with WWII nostalgia but Russia’s hybrid war continues

By Eugene Czolij

Presidents Trump and Putin recently issued a joint statement praising the WWII meeting of US and Soviet troops as “an example of how our countries can build trust.” However, with Russia waging a hybrid war against the West, trust is in short supply.

Conflict Politics & Diplomacy

UkraineAlert

May 4, 2020

East Ukraine: Between a pandemic and a war zone

By Eric Fritz and Frank Martin

Covid-19 is a global crisis, but its impacts on war zones will prove to be uniquely tragic. Nowhere is this more evident than in the conflict-stricken Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Conflict Coronavirus

UkraineAlert

May 4, 2020

Zelenskyy prefers to stay silent on Russian war guilt

By Taras Kuzio

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made ending the country’s ongoing war with Russia his top priority. However, his reluctance to hold Moscow publicly responsible for the conflict risks complicating efforts to secure peace.

Conflict Russia

UkraineAlert

May 4, 2020

A serious but flawed look at peace in the Donbas

By John E. Herbst

The conflict in the Donbas cannot be solved by Ukraine and Russia alone, but the West must not unconditionally accept a "Russian consensus" to achieve it.

Conflict Economic Sanctions

UkraineAlert

May 3, 2020

Zelenskyy fails to deliver on promise of a new beginning

By David Clark

Volodymyr Zelenskyy won the Ukrainian presidency in spring 2019 as a political outsider promising an end to decades of corrupt government. One year on, Ukrainians are still waiting for evidence of this fight against corruption.

Democratic Transitions Populism
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