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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

Apr 20, 2022

UN: Ukraine refugee crisis is Europe’s biggest since WWII

By
Julian Vierlinger

According to UN data, more than five million Ukrainians have now fled their homeland since the start of Russia's invasion on February 24, representing the biggest European refugee crisis since the Second World War.


Civil Society


Conflict


UkraineAlert

Apr 18, 2022

Putin’s Generation Z: Kremlin pro-war propaganda targets young Russians

By
Doug Klain

The wave of fanaticism unleashed by the invasion of Ukraine is creating a new generation of radicalized young Russians who embrace the toxic brand of militarism and extreme nationalism promoted by the Kremlin.


Conflict


Disinformation


UkraineAlert

Apr 17, 2022

How Putin’s Russia embraced fascism while preaching anti-fascism

By
Taras Kuzio

Vladimir Putin poses as an "anti-fascist" leader engaged in the noble task of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, but in reality it is Putin's increasingly fascist Russia that is in urgent need of “de-Nazification,” writes Taras Kuzio.


Civil Society


Conflict


UkraineAlert

Apr 16, 2022

Never Again?

By
Victor Pinchuk

Ever since the Nazi Holocaust, German leaders have declared "never again," but they are now guilty of failing to prevent Russia from committing a new genocide in Ukraine, says Victor Pinchuk.


Conflict


Economy & Business


UkraineAlert

Apr 14, 2022

The world must not allow Putin to bankrupt Ukraine into surrender

By
Peter Dickinson

Russian war crimes in Ukraine have shocked the world but the systematic damage being done to the Ukrainian economy is also an important element of Putin's invasion that requires urgent international attention.


Conflict


Economy & Business


UkraineAlert

Apr 13, 2022

Memo to Macron: Putin’s Ukraine genocide is not the act of a brother

By
Peter Dickinson

French President Emmanuel Macron has refused to describe the mass killing of Ukrainians by Russian soldiers as genocide despite overwhelming evidence of Putin's intention to destroy the Ukrainian nation.


Conflict


Disinformation


UkraineAlert

Apr 12, 2022

Europe must stop funding Vladimir Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine

By
Basil Kalymon

While the international community condemns Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, European countries continue to fund the war by paying Russia EUR 1 billion every day for oil and gas supplies.


Conflict


Energy Transitions


UkraineAlert

Apr 11, 2022

At what point do Russian war crimes in Ukraine qualify as genocide?

By
Bohdan Vitvitsky

Evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine has shocked the world but there is not yet any international consensus over whether the mass killings of Ukrainians carried out by Vladimir Putin's troops qualify as genocide.


Conflict


European Union


UkraineAlert

Apr 9, 2022

Lend-Lease for Ukraine: US revives WWII anti-Hitler policy to defeat Putin

By
Chris Alexander

The United States is reviving the WWII Lend-Lease program which helped defeat Hitler in order to dramatically increase arms deliveries to Ukraine and set the stage for Vladimir Putin's eventual military defeat.


Arms Control


Conflict


UkraineAlert

Apr 8, 2022

Perseverance can bring Russian war criminals including Putin to justice

By
Thomas S. Warrick

Patience and perseverance are vital as efforts get underway to bring Vladimir Putin and members of the Russian military to justice for crimes against humanity committed during the war in Ukraine.


Conflict


Disinformation

spotlight

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

Feb 28, 2017

Putin Learns the Hard Way that Crimean Crime Does Not Pay

By Peter Dickinson

Ever since the stunning Russian takeover of Crimea in early 2014, it has become popular to regard Russian President Vladimir Putin as some kind of geopolitical genius. The international media regularly depicts him as a James Bond-style supervillain, always a few steps ahead of his hapless Western opponents as he determines the fate of the […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 27, 2017

Trump and Putin: The Shortest Honeymoon Ever Is Over

By Ariel Cohen

As Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster takes over President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, conducting a bottom-up review and developing a Russia policy at the NSC, Pentagon, and State Department should be a top priority for the administration. Russia has resumed a quasi-Cold War posture. In the last few weeks, Russia escalated fighting in the occupied […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 27, 2017

What Pence Should Have Said: Russia, Not Terrorism, Is the Most Urgent Security Threat

By Stephen Blank

Whatever else occurred at the annual Munich Security Conference on February 17-19, reassurances were not part of it. None of the statements made by high-ranking American officials allayed European fears about President Donald Trump’s administration because, simultaneously, the White House was busy undermining them. Moreover, Vice President Mike Pence’s “unwavering” support of NATO was balanced […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 23, 2017

The West Needs to Call Russia’s Bluff in the Balkans

By Dimitar Bechev

For all the uncertainties about the Balkans, one thing stays the same. Every few years, the headline “We Are Heading for War Again” crops up in the Western media. The last time this happened, the 2014 centennial of the First World War inspired pundits to ask whether the world is on the cusp of another […]

Russia The Balkans

UkraineAlert

Feb 21, 2017

Ukraine’s Bitter Struggle: The Prequel

By Diane Francis

Ukraine is a nation interrupted, its identity and promise stolen by predators for centuries. The predation continues today as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s creeping invasion of Ukraine grinds on, resulting in the murder of 10,000 Ukrainians, destruction of two major cities and its industrial base, seizure of nine percent of its land, and flight of […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 21, 2017

The KGB and Me

By Jeffrey Gedmin

We overlapped, Vladimir Putin and me. Putin arrived in Dresden in August 1985 as a 32-year-old KGB major. He was working undercover as a consular officer, recruiting academics, journalists, and business people to spy for the Soviet Union in the West. I was in Dresden and throughout communist East Germany often in those days; I […]

Germany Russia

UkraineAlert

Feb 20, 2017

The Heavens Are Home to More than One Hundred

By Robert McConnell

In the fall of 2013, students took to the Maidan (Independence Square) in Kyiv in protest. Their complaint was with then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who had reneged on his pledge to sign the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine and was instead negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Euromaidan was underway. Additional protesters streamed into the […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 20, 2017

The Nuclear Fallout of a Possible Trump-Putin Détente

By Mariana Budjeryn and Andreas Umland

So far, US President Donald Trump’s Russia policy remains a mystery. Does he want to set in motion a US-Russia rapprochement? If so, sanctions against Russia may be increasingly difficult to sustain. The Trump administration might judge Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity to be a bothersome yet insufficient impediment to mending fences with Putin and, […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 17, 2017

Who’s Up and Who’s Down in Eastern Ukraine?

By Oleksandr Nykonorov and Volodymyr Yermolenko

The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) are self-proclaimed entities that emerged in spring 2014 in eastern Ukraine thanks to massive Russian support. Ukraine’s attempts to retake them in spring and summer 2014 were stopped by a full-scale Russian military offensive that August. This more or less fixed the demarcation line between […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 15, 2017

Multiculturalism Is the Answer to Ukraine’s Identity Crisis

By Peter Dickinson

Celebrating diversity: that’s the official theme of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest, which will take place in Kyiv this May. This is an inspired choice; Ukraine has been one of Europe’s most diverse and multicultural lands for centuries. Since the Soviet collapse, this organic multiculturalism has played a disappointingly minor role in Ukraine’s nation-building efforts. […]

Russia Ukraine