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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 Economy & Business

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 Education

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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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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Content

UkraineAlert

May 14, 2019

Even if Ukraine’s reformers unify, so what?

By Melinda Haring

Five years after the Euromaidan street protests, Ukrainians are still waiting for transformative leaders and justice. On May 20, political newcomer Volodymyr Zelenskiy will be sworn in as president. But that won’t necessarily result in a significant change for the country: Ukraine’s next president is inexperienced and his links to oligarchs are troubling. Its parliament, […]

Civil Society Elections

UkraineAlert

May 13, 2019

Will Ukraine become a giant Moldova?

By James Brooke

Without a red-tape slashing revolution, Ukraine will become a big Moldova—a bedroom country for migrant workers building the dynamic economies of eastern Europe.

Migration Moldova

UkraineAlert

May 8, 2019

Zelenskyy’s first big test

By Basil Kalymon

A key issue has emerged in the post-election drama in Ukraine. In a disturbing interview given by Andrij Bohdan, lawyer, confidant, and political advisor to President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he reveals that he continues to act as a lawyer for oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskiy with regard to the nationalization of PrivatBank. This assertion, if accepted by the […]

Corruption Financial Regulation

UkraineAlert

May 8, 2019

Reality check

By Bohdan Nahaylo

Ukraine’s presidential election was a veritable political earthquake. The fault line between the old and the new, the real and the illusory, and pseudo-nationalism and grassroots patriotism, has been dramatically exposed. The old political establishment was shaken to its very foundations, and the strong tremors and shockwaves continue to be felt. The shifting political tectonic […]

Elections Nationalism

UkraineAlert

May 6, 2019

Why we can’t get enough of Ukraine

By Francis Fukuyama

The impact one can have on building institutions like the modern state, the rule of law, and democracy is limited. The area where it’s easiest is the third category, building democracy. The first two, building the modern state and building a real rule of law, are much harder, and those are the areas that have been […]

Corruption Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert

May 6, 2019

The illusions of Putin’s Russia

By Anders Åslund

The best defense of the West against Putin’s authoritarian and kleptocratic regime is transparency, shining light on this anonymous wealth.

Corruption Financial Regulation

UkraineAlert

May 3, 2019

Children as a tool: how Russia militarizes kids in the Donbas and Crimea

By Iryna Matviyishyn

With an eye to the future, officials in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine are waging a campaign of “patriotic education” aimed at reaching the hearts and minds of those most susceptible to ideological persuasion: children. Russia has always used the militarization of public life to indoctrinate local populations and continues that practice today. Currently, thousands […]

Conflict Human Rights

UkraineAlert

May 2, 2019

Time for Ukraine to compete with Russia

By Grigory Frolov

Showman Volodymyr Zelenskiy will soon be sworn in as president of Ukraine. Last month he crushed incumbent President Petro Poroshenko in a remarkable landslide. Zelenskiy’s victory was noteworthy in Ukraine, but it’s also making headlines across the former Soviet Union. While Zelenskiy is inexperienced and his policies aren’t well defined, he knows how to engage […]

European Union Inclusive Growth

UkraineAlert

May 2, 2019

Ukraine’s new language law rights historic wrongs

By Andrej Lushnycky

For centuries the Ukrainian language was relegated to the status of a “peasant language” by the foreign rulers of the lands that make up the country today and by foreign scholars in Europe and abroad who perpetuated this Russian imperial falsehood. More recently, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a Soviet political […]

Civil Society Nationalism

UkraineAlert

Apr 29, 2019

Vladimir Putin does Shakespeare

By Stephen Blank

Vladimir Putin’s newest display of talent is his excelling in theatrics. He recently elected to play Macbeth or Richard III. Having nothing left to offer Russia as the indices of immiseration pile up, Putin’s recourse to imperial theatrics has dramatically accelerated. But ultimately this performance, like those of his predecessors on stage and in reality, […]

Conflict Human Rights