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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.


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Latest analysis


UkraineAlert

Oct 26, 2015

As Ukraine Moves Toward Decentralization, Challenges Loom

By
Alina Polyakova

Kyiv, Ukraine – On Sunday, October 25, Ukrainians went to the polls to elect mayors and representatives to municipal councils. Under normal circumstances, local elections would go more or less unnoticed by international observers, but with no elections taking place in occupied territories, including Crimea and the Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples’ Republics, these are far […]


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UkraineAlert

Oct 23, 2015

Imperial Gamble Doesn’t Pay Off: New Book Gets Ukraine’s History Wrong

By
Alexei Sobchenko

In his new book, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine and the New Cold War, the renowned American journalist Marvin Kalb touches on an issue outside his traditional area of expertise in domestic politics: the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and its implications for US-Russia relations.


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UkraineAlert

Oct 21, 2015

Battle to End Pharma Corruption Makes Progress, Needs Push

By
Josh Cohen

As the ceasefire in the Donbas takes hold, Ukraine can now face its other existential threat: the endemic corruption that threatens the country’s long-term stability and prosperity. While graft within the Ukrainian government is widespread, corruption is perhaps most threatening in the area of government procurement. Public procurement corruption costs Kyiv billions, with as much […]


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 21, 2015

Ukrainians Face Another Election Headache

By
Irena Chalupa

People are more important than political interests. This party will never betray you. Fair wages and pensions. People, not politicians. Let’s unite for Ukraine! Order and justice. These are just a few of the messages blaring at Kyiv residents from billboards. Ukraine’s capital is awash with campaign tents manned by students and retirees wearing smocks […]


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 20, 2015

“No Fighting” in Ukraine Is Not “Peace”

By
Aaron Korewa

The main problem with the West’s approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin is that it doesn’t seem to know who it’s dealing with. In an excellent article in Foreign Policy, Raymond Tanter states the bleatingly obvious—the Russian leader is nothing but a bully and should be treated as such. While the United States and Europe […]


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UkraineAlert

Oct 19, 2015

Europe’s Refugee Crisis Shows Ukraine’s Resilience

By
Colin Cleary

Ukraine Has Absorbed 1.5 Million Displaced; Soon It Must Employ Them With Europe awash in more than a half-million refugees from Middle Eastern and other wars, it might be easy to overlook Ukraine’s response to its own population—nearly three times the size, at 1.5 million—displaced by the Russian-backed war in the east. More than 18 […]


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UkraineAlert

Oct 19, 2015

Ukrainians Eager to Go to Polls

By
Brian Mefford

In less than a week, Ukrainians go to the polls to elect mayors, city councils, and regional councils, and they’re eager to do so. A recent poll carried out by the International Republican Institute found that 75 percent of Ukrainians are very likely or somewhat likely to vote on October 25. A new law requires […]


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 19, 2015

Ukraine Can Beat Its Political Corruption

By
Anders Åslund

Ukraine’s politics suffer from a vicious circle of corruption. Its elections are extremely expensive. Large amounts of gray and black funds are needed to finance them. Criminals, called gray cardinals, handle this black financing, extracted from the state treasury and state companies. To corrupt all, the gray cardinals and their political allies insist on tiny […]


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UkraineAlert

Oct 15, 2015

New Movie Reveals Russia’s Attempts to Destroy Ukraine

By
Diane Francis

Ukraine is a nation interrupted, its identity and promise stolen by invaders and predators for centuries. Ukraine’s principle oppressor has been, and remains, Russia where leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin propagate the fiction that Ukraine is “little Russia.” But the two are distinctive and the Ukrainian language is as different from Russian as is […]


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UkraineAlert

Oct 14, 2015

Why Crimea’s Blockade is Necessary

By
Maksym Bugriy

Since September 20, Crimean Tatar activists and other protesters—mostly from Right Sector—have been blockading the flow of goods from mainland Ukraine to Crimea. The Kyiv government has neither formally supported nor criticized the move. The reaction among analysts, observers, and bloggers has been mixed—from enthusiasm to caution and even downright criticism.


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UkraineAlert

Feb 20, 2018

Ukraine’s Had Revolutions, But Where Is the Real Evolution?

By Ruslan Minich

In the last three decades, Ukraine has experienced three dramatic changes that have often been referred to as revolutions. But were they genuinely revolutionary?

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 20, 2018

Putin as Far as the Eye Can See, And Then What?

By Leonid Gozman

The Russian presidential election will take place on March 18. The outcome of the election is obvious: Vladimir Putin will keep his seat. However, although the name of the president won’t change, the country will. March 18 won’t just mark the end of the election campaign. It will also launch Putin’s last term, which will […]

Russia

UkraineAlert

Feb 19, 2018

Four Years after the Maidan, How Is the Investigation Going?

By Tetyana Ogarkova

On February 18, 2014, the most tragic part of the Revolution of Dignity started; more than one hundred people were killed, several dozens went missing, and over a thousand were wounded in Kyiv on February 18-20. Yevhenia Zakrevska, the leading lawyer of the so-called Heavenly Hundred families who lost loved ones on the Maidan during […]

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UkraineAlert

Feb 15, 2018

We’re All In! Ukraine Moving Forward on Women’s Participation

By Lauren Van Metre

Women’s rights have made major strides in Ukraine since 2014. In particular, elevating the coordination of the government’s gender equality policies to the office of the Vice Prime Minister for EU and Euro-Atlantic Integration, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, has led to real breakthroughs.

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UkraineAlert

Feb 14, 2018

Forget East-West and Language Divide. Politicians May Exploit New Wedge Issues in Ukraine’s Elections

By Ruslan Minich

Ukraine has decisively moved toward the West. Previously pulled between East and West, Ukrainians are now more united on key issues that had previously rankled the country for decades. More Ukrainians want educational instruction in Ukrainian, greater numbers prefer EU and NATO membership, and support for democracy far outstrips support for a strongman. At the […]

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UkraineAlert

Feb 14, 2018

How to Waste Western Military Assistance

By Olena Prokopenko

In late 2017, Ukraine failed to receive assistance that was expected from two of its largest donors, the IMF and the EU. The anticipated funding—over $2.5 billion—was strictly conditioned on specific reforms. Both donors referred to the country’s lack of compliance with its obligations in the anticorruption and economic areas. In response, the Ukrainian government […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 12, 2018

Is This the End of Mikheil Saakashvili in Ukraine?

By Melinda Haring

Today opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili was deported to Poland. For months he has been leading protests outside of Ukraine’s parliament, urging President Petro Poroshenko to resign. The Saakashvili drama has been ongoing; last year he was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship and then reentered the country illegally. In December, he was arrested and then broke […]

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UkraineAlert

Feb 9, 2018

What Do Ukraine, Congo, Cuba, North Korea, Tajikistan, and Venezuela Have in Common?

By Maxim Martynyuk

Since 2014, when a democratic revolution triumphed in Ukraine, there have been two kinds of reports coming from my country: those about Ukrainians’ heroic resistance against Russian aggression, and those about the corruption that is destroying the country. The truth, of course, is more nuanced and mundane: Ukraine is gradually advancing, sometimes with two steps […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 7, 2018

The View from Inside a Donetsk Prison

By Matthew Kupfer

When Russian-led separatists seized control of Donetsk in 2014, Ihor Kozlovsky did what many residents of the city were doing: he stayed put. But unlike others, Kozlovsky was not a supporter of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR). In fact, he was a Ukrainian patriot, a professor and world-renowned expert of comparative religion at Donetsk […]

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UkraineAlert

Feb 7, 2018

Why Election Reform Should Be a Top Priority Now

By Andrew Fink

Election reform in Ukraine is finally gaining some momentum. In December, parliament passed in the first reading draft law #3112-1, which creates an open list proportional election system and makes it easier for small parties to win seats in parliament. In addition, the president’s long-awaited list of candidates for the Central Election Commission has finally […]

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