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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

Jun 26, 2018

What Ukraine’s Anticorruption Warriors Forget, And Why It May Weaken the State

By
Adrian Karatnycky and Alexander J. Motyl

Daria Kaleniuk’s rejoinder to our Foreign Affairs article, “How Western Anticorruption Policy Is Failing Ukraine,” misses our main point. We asserted that Western anticorruption policy was failing because it had been improperly sequenced, especially with regard to judicial reform. Kaleniuk indirectly admits this by pointing to the urgent need to create an anticorruption court three years […]


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Jun 26, 2018

Democracy Is Under Major Attack in Moldova. Is Anyone Paying Attention?

By
Dumitru Alaiba

Last week a court in Moldova’s capital of Chișinău annulled the popular vote in local elections, which were won by pro-European opposition leader Andrei Năstase. The formal grounds for canceling the results are absurd; on election day the candidate urged people to vote on social media. This is no reason to block an elected official […]


Moldova


UkraineAlert

Jun 25, 2018

Q&A: What’s Behind Moldova’s Massive Protests?

By
Melinda Haring

Protesters are taking to the streets of Moldova’s capital of Chisinau again. On June 3, Andrei Nastase was elected mayor of Chisinau with 52.5% of the vote. Nastase, a pro-European prosecutor and anti-corruption activist, defeated Socialist Ion Ceban who favors closer ties to Moscow. On June 19, a Chisinau court struck down the election results, […]


Moldova


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Jun 25, 2018

Hunger Strike Points to Missed PR Opportunity for Putin Regime

By
Diane Francis

The World Cup in Russia is a Potemkin football extravaganza or a fancy façade designed to depict the country as advanced and civilized. In reality, it’s neither. Facts are that in recent international sporting events Russia’s athletes have been caught doping on a massive scale, or, alternatively, Putin has used festivities to camouflage the invasion […]


Russia


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Jun 21, 2018

There’s More to Ukraine than Krieg, Krise, and Krim (War, Crisis, Crimea): How Germans See the Country

By
Andreas Umland

Both Germany and Ukraine have special significance for the European project. Germany is Western Europe’s economically and demographically most significant country, while Ukraine is Eastern Europe’s largest and a geopolitical pivot point. The historical links between Ukrainians and Germans run deep. And yet little attention has been paid to the nature of the relationship between […]


Germany


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Jun 20, 2018

Ten Ukrainian Technologies You May Already Be Using

By
Ruslan Minich

What do Snapchat filters, liquid jet scalpels, Uber for yachts, and virtual reality gloves have in common? They are all decisively modern innovations that have emerged at the cutting edge of technological development—and they all demonstrate the ingenuity and economic dynamism of twenty-first century Ukraine.


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Jun 20, 2018

Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn’t Write This Headline)

By
Josh Cohen

It sounds like the stuff of Kremlin propaganda, but it’s not. Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote “national patriotic education projects” in the country. On June 8, the Ministry announced that it will award C14 a little less than $17,000 for a […]


Russia


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Jun 18, 2018

Five Ways the Kremlin Can Meddle in Ukraine’s Big Election

By
Mykola Vorobiov

On June 15, Yulia Tymoshenko launched the start of Ukraine’s presidential election season with a two-and-half hour speech in Kyiv, Ukraine. With twenty-nine percent of voters telling pollsters they haven’t made their minds up for the race slated for March 31, the field is wide open. But it’s not too soon to start worrying about […]


Russia


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Jun 15, 2018

They speak Russian in Crimea, but that doesn’t make it part of Russia

By
Peter Dickinson

Away from the frontlines of the conflict, the myth of Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin Russian-speakers never really needed debunking.


Conflict


Nationalism


UkraineAlert

Jun 14, 2018

Will Ukraine’s New Anticorruption Court Make a Difference?

By
Anastasia Krasnosilska

On June 7, Ukraine’s parliament finally adopted a long-awaited law that paves the way for the establishment of an anticorruption court. Members of parliament had only one hour to evaluate the draft before voting, and the final text was released on June 13. Ukrainians have been waiting for four long years for justice. None of […]


Ukraine

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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

Nov 2, 2017

Pragmatism Prevails over Populism in Ukraine

By Brian Mefford

Successful politics is about getting things done. By that standard, October was a successful month. Not only did the government pass sweeping healthcare reform, pension reform, and judiciary reform, it also staved off populist protests. In short, pragmatism prevailed over populism. Each of the reforms passed was significant, but healthcare reform was the most far-reaching. […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Oct 31, 2017

Groisman Tells Investors that Shakedowns and Harassment Will End

By Diane Francis

Prime Minister Volodymyr Groisman welcomes the creation of an independent anticorruption court in Ukraine and says it will be operating in 2018. “The debate was whether this court should be independent or a chamber. This was a waste of time,” he said in an extensive interview in Toronto. “From day one, I was in support […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Oct 31, 2017

In Lviv, World-Class Learning Center Opens Where Soviets Wanted Drab Building

By Melinda Haring

On September 10, Ukrainian Catholic University opened a 64,874 square foot world-class library and educational center in Lviv, Ukraine. Ukrainian Catholic University, the first Catholic university in the former Soviet Union, strives to provide an open, progressive, and democratic learning environment for its students and the community. Canadian businessman and philanthropist James Temerty was the […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Oct 31, 2017

What Manafort’s Indictment Means for the US and Ukraine

By Anders Åslund

The most surprising thing about the thirty-one-page indictment of Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and his business partner Richard W. Gates III by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is that it hardly contains anything that was not known to people who have observed Ukraine. Manafort was the all-dominant political advisor to former President Viktor Yanukovych from the […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Oct 30, 2017

How to End the War in Eastern Ukraine

By Alexander Vershbow

The recent US debate about Russia has focused mainly on Moscow’s disinformation, propaganda, and interference in our elections. But Russia’s aggression against Ukraine remains the original sin and the biggest threat. It’s not just Ukraine’s survival as an independent, democratic state that is on the line, but the future of an international order based on […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Oct 26, 2017

The High Stakes of Ukraine’s Reform Struggle

By Stephen Blank

It is easy to despair about Ukraine ever reforming and becoming a normal European state. Nevertheless, such despair would be a mistaken response to the flood of stories depicting obstructions to reform—even if they are true. While anyone who has dealt with Ukraine in the last twenty-five years has experienced the frustrations of trying to […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Oct 26, 2017

Ukraine Is Really Changing: A Business Can Register in Twenty Minutes or Less

By Victor Liakh and Olexiy Zelivyanskyi

It now takes only twenty minutes to register a business in Ukraine. Since March 2017, entrepreneurs have been able to open and close businesses through a new online portal that the Ministry of Justice and the State Agency for E-Governance are behind. The new service proved popular: in its first six months, it was used […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Oct 24, 2017

Why Ukraine’s Next Revolution Won’t Be on the Streets

By Diane Francis

Deposed President Viktor Yanukovych and the Kremlin continue to create mayhem inside Ukraine but have lost the hearts and minds of most Ukrainians, said security expert Andriy Levus. “Confiscation of assets in the Donbas finances the military war for Yanukovych and Russia, and it’s a cover for smuggling, but only for another year or so,” […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Oct 23, 2017

Will Austria’s New Government End Sanctions on Russia?

By Péter Krekó, Berhard Weidinger, Fabian Schmid, and Lóránt Győri

The far-right Austrian Freedom Party will likely become part of the next Austrian federal government following the October 15 parliamentary elections. For the first time since the introduction of sanctions on Russia in 2014, a member of a vehemently pro-Russian and anti-sanctions party would become a governmental force. Will this mean the end of the […]

Russia

UkraineAlert

Oct 23, 2017

Why Ukraine’s Week of Protests Quickly Fizzled

By Adrian Karatnycky

A week of protests on behalf of needed reforms in Ukraine have rapidly fizzled having made limited headway in pressing for legislative action while discrediting a segment of liberal reformers with its populist rhetoric and aggressive tactics. The protest outside parliament, which some organizers had expected would bring at least 10,000 to the streets, peaked […]

Ukraine