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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

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

UkraineAlert

Feb 24, 2022

Ukraine desperately needs help

By Andrey Stavnitser

As Russia declares war, Ukraine calls on the global community not to sit on the sidelines and to urgently stand with Ukrainians.

Conflict Financial Sanctions and Economic Coercion

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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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UkraineAlert

Mar 29, 2019

Whoever wins Ukraine’s presidential race, Russia has already lost

By Peter Dickinson

It’s election season on Kremlin TV, but the presidential campaign receiving wall-to-wall coverage from Russia’s federal channels is taking place across the border in Ukraine. This is hardly surprising. Moscow’s obsession with all things Ukrainian is well-documented and reflects the centrality of information operations to Vladimir Putin’s five-year hybrid war against Ukraine. What’s interesting about […]

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert

Mar 29, 2019

Who gains from using the far-right in Ukraine’s elections?

By Taras Kuzio

The G-7 wrote to Minister of Interior Arsen Avakov about the threat to Ukraine’s presidential election from the far-right National Corps political party and National Militia civic organization, both led by Andriy Biletsky with whom he has had a long relationship. The G-7 warned, “They intimidate Ukrainian citizens, try to usurp the role of the […]

Elections Extremism

UkraineAlert

Mar 28, 2019

Time to play hardball on reforming Ukraine’s security service

By Oleksandra Ustinova and Steven Pifer

In June 2018, Ukraine’s parliament adopted the Law on National Security, with the help of the United States and other international partners, including NATO and the European Union. Among other things, the law set the frame for the functions of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and opened the door for comprehensive reform of that […]

Conflict Corruption

UkraineAlert

Mar 28, 2019

The Kremlin’s top eight lies about Ukraine’s presidential race

By Tetyana Matychak

On March 31, Ukrainians go to the polls to elect their sixth president. An openly pro-Russian candidate is unlikely to win. However, Moscow is watching closely and cares about the outcome. What is it saying about the election? We analyzed the most widespread Kremlin manipulations about Ukraine’s presidential election on Russian state-controlled media in March. […]

Civil Society Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert

Mar 25, 2019

What to expect from Ukraine’s completely unpredictable presidential election

By Brian Mefford

On March 31, Ukrainians will select their sixth president. The election is seen a referendum on the incumbent Poroshenko administration and his record since the watershed Euromaidan Revolution that decisively moved Ukraine onto a pro-Western path. Polls put political newcomer Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the lead, with Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko fighting for […]

Elections Political Reform

UkraineAlert

Mar 25, 2019

Some things never change

By Andreas Umland

Ukraine’s presidential election is less than a week away, and no candidate will win outright with fifty percent. Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy leads in the polls and will certainly be in the run-off election on April 21. The big question is whether he will face incumbent President Petro Poroshenko or former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Poroshenko […]

Elections Eurozone

UkraineAlert

Mar 25, 2019

The real Russian candidate in Ukraine’s presidential race

By Anders Åslund

On March 22, nine days before the Ukrainian presidential election, Ukraine’s pro-Russian presidential candidate Yuriy Boyko went to Moscow to meet Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev without prior announcement. It’s strange for a presidential candidate to visit a leader of a country with which it is at war, but that was only the beginning of […]

Corruption Elections

UkraineAlert

Mar 21, 2019

Real advice, not platitudes, keeps Kyiv on reform path

By Steven Pifer and William B. Taylor

We read with interest Adrian Karatnycky’s piece “Viceroys in Kyiv.”  We respect Mr. Karatnycky but have a different perspective. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. We each served as the American ambassador to Ukraine and, in that capacity as well as in other positions in the US government, urged our Ukrainian counterparts to move on reform—both in […]

Corruption Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert

Mar 21, 2019

Viceroys in Kyiv?

By Adrian Karatnycky

How should Western diplomats advance democracy and the rule of law? In closed societies, as the late US diplomat Mark Palmer argued, US ambassadors should be clear voices for human rights and due process. They should monitor attacks on human rights, attend trials of dissidents, and speak out when they see major violations of freedom. […]

Corruption International Financial Institutions

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Mar 19, 2019

Want justice? In Ukraine, you may have to do it yourself

By Diane Francis

Viktor Handziuk speaks softly about his only child, daughter Kateryna, and how she defended classmates from bullies when growing up. Kateryna grew and took on Ukraine’s bullies by participating in the Orange and Euromaidan Revolutions and by becoming a lawyer and public administrator in Kherson, a city of 290,000 just one hour from Crimea. But […]

Civil Society Corruption