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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

Latest analysis

UkraineAlert

Mar 6, 2022

Putin’s Ukraine War: Russian oligarchs must face tougher sanctions

By Diane Francis

Sanctions against Russian oligarchs are starting to work and have already caused some to speak out against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Their influence on the Kremlin is key and pressure on them must now continue.

Conflict
Economic Sanctions

UkraineAlert

Mar 6, 2022

Why Vladimir Putin is losing the information war to Ukraine

By Anders Åslund

Vladimir Putin has long enjoyed a reputation as a master of disinformation, but the Russian ruler is now clearly losing the global information war that is being waged alongside his invasion of Ukraine.

Civil Society
Conflict

UkraineAlert

Mar 4, 2022

Sanctioning Putin’s Ukraine War: Time to cut academic ties with Russia?

By Richard L. Hudson

As the West imposes crushing sanctions on Russia over Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, governments must also address the complex issue of academic cooperation with Russian universities.

Conflict
Economic Sanctions

UkraineAlert

Mar 3, 2022

Inside Vladimir Putin’s criminal plan to purge and partition Ukraine

By Taras Kuzio

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has raised the chilling prospect of a brutal occupation including a purge of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Western elements of the civilian population and possible annexations of Ukrainian land.

Conflict
Disinformation

UkraineAlert

Mar 2, 2022

Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine War is a blueprint for genocide

By Peter Dickinson

Putin has convinced millions of Russians that Ukraine is not a country and Ukrainians are really Russians. This has set the stage for mass atrocities in the country as the Russian invasion runs into the reality of a hostile Ukraine.

Conflict
Disinformation

UkraineAlert

Mar 1, 2022

New crowdsourcing campaign can help save Ukraine

By Petr Tůma

A new crowdsourcing initiative aims to make the most of the Czech Republic’s extensive stocks of Soviet-era weapons in order to bolster Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Vladimir Putin’s Russian invasion.

Central Europe
Civil Society

UkraineAlert

Feb 28, 2022

Putin has fatally underestimated Ukrainians

By Inna Sovsun

Vladimir Putin made a grave miscalculation when he invaded Ukraine. The Russian ruler hoped to decapitate the Ukrainian state and install a new regime, but is now at war with the entire 40 million Ukrainian nation.

Civil Society
Conflict

UkraineAlert

Feb 27, 2022

Ukraine War: Vladimir Putin has gambled everything and lost

By Alexander Motyl

Putin has gambled and lost. Ukrainians will suffer terribly from his criminal invasion, but they will survive and emerge as a strong, modern nation. Putin faces a far more uncertain future following this senseless war.

Conflict
Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert

Feb 26, 2022

Ukrainians are wondering: Where is the West?

By Natalie Jaresko

A former finance minister of Ukraine gives an impassioned plea for more assistance to her country as it is under assault from Russia.

Conflict
Europe & Eurasia

UkraineAlert

Feb 24, 2022

What Ukraine needs now

By Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Kersti Kaljulaid, Carl Bildt, Stéphane Fouks, Wolfgang Ischinger, Victor Pinchuk, Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Russia has invaded Ukraine. Far from shrinking away, the EU should work to further integrate Ukraine and offer it a membership perspective.

Conflict
Eurozone

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Content

UkraineAlert

Jul 6, 2020

Czar Putin wants a new age of empires

By Nataliia Popovych and Danylo Lubkivsky

In both word and deed, Putin has made it clear that he rejects today’s rules-based international order and seeks to reverse the verdict of 1991. His vision for a new age of empires represents an existential challenge to the West.

Conflict
Disinformation

UkraineAlert

Jul 2, 2020

Analysis: Ukraine’s central bank governor quits post citing “political pressure”

By Peter Dickinson

National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Governor Yakiv Smolii submitted his resignation on July 1 in what was widely seen as a major blow to Ukraine’s reform agenda. What does this mean for the country’s future direction?

Economy & Business
Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Jul 1, 2020

Ukraine’s central bank chief resigns leaving Zelenskyy’s reform credentials in tatters

By Anders Åslund

Ukraine’s reform agenda suffered a serious blow on July 1 when Yakiv Smolii, the highly respected governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), resigned due to what he called “systematic political pressure.”

Financial Regulation
Macroeconomics

UkraineAlert

Jun 30, 2020

Ukraine’s powerful Interior Minister Avakov under fire over police reform failures

By Liliane Bivings

Ukraine's post-2014 police reforms were initially hailed as a success but have since unraveled alarmingly. Many now blame powerful Interior Minister Arsen Avakov for blocking genuine law enforcement reform.

Political Reform
Rule of Law

UkraineAlert

Jun 29, 2020

How fake news helped hide Soviet genocide in Ukraine

By Georgiy Kent

Stalin’s man-made famine in 1930s Ukraine ranks as one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century but it remains relatively unknown. The new movie "Mr. Jones" seeks to counter decades of disinformation.

Disinformation
Media

UkraineAlert

Jun 27, 2020

Russia is quietly occupying Ukraine’s information space

By Taras Kuzio

Viktor Medvedchuk is Ukraine's leading pro-Kremlin politician and a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. Medvedchuk's expanding media empire is sparking concerns over Russian influence in Ukraine's information space.

Conflict
Disinformation

UkraineAlert

Jun 25, 2020

How Russia weaponizes the language issue in Ukraine

By Iryna Matviyishyn

Critics of Ukraine's 2019 Language Law claim that it goes too far in promoting the Ukrainian language at the expense of Russian. Others claim attempts to politicize language policy will only help Putin.

Conflict
Disinformation

UkraineAlert

Jun 24, 2020

The US is defending Europe by blocking Putin’s pipeline

By Diane Francis

Berlin has slammed US plans to impose harsh new sanctions on Vladimir Putin's Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but critics see the project as a direct threat to European security and energy independence.

European Union
Geopolitics & Energy Security

UkraineAlert

Jun 24, 2020

Ukraine needs EU rules to avoid global gas imbalances

By Aura Sabadus

More than 50 European companies may be barred from exporting gas to Ukraine during the peak storage season if the Ukrainian and Slovak gas transmission system operators fail to reach a solution for an alternative transport route during an unplanned pipeline outage this summer.

Central Europe
Energy Markets & Governance

UkraineAlert

Jun 23, 2020

What John Bolton tells us about President Trump’s Ukraine policy

By Anders Åslund

Former White House national security advisor John Bolton's new book “The Room Where It Happened” is an extraordinary read that portrays President Trump as being deeply hostile towards Ukraine.

Politics & Diplomacy
Russia