UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture. UkraineAlert sources analysis and commentary from a wide-array of thought-leaders, politicians, experts, and activists from Ukraine and the global community. UkraineAlert has become a major publication in Ukraine’s news landscape and has established itself not only through its quality of content but also significant partnerships with English, Ukrainian, and Russian-language media through the country.

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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

The KGB and Me

UkraineAlert
Sep 3, 2026

Putin cannot defeat NATO but he could divide and discredit the alliance

By
Peter Dickinson

If Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to attack NATO, his goal will be to divide and discredit the alliance rather than actually defeating it, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict
Defense Policy

The KGB and Me

UkraineAlert
Aug 27, 2026

Ukrainians are not superheroes with endless powers of resilience

By
Lauren Van Metre, Elena Davlikanova

By celebrating Ukrainian resilience as an almost superhuman quality, the international community risks obscuring the much less glamorous reality that Ukrainians are actually ordinary people who have endured extraordinary violence for far too long, write Lauren Van Metre and Elena Davlikanova.

Civil Society
Conflict

The KGB and Me

UkraineAlert
Aug 25, 2026

A cultural renaissance is reshaping national identity in wartime Ukraine

By
Davis Richardson

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is fueling a defiant cultural outpouring that is redefining and strengthening Ukrainian national identity in ways that challenge centuries of Kremlin imperialism, writes Davis Richardson.

Civil Society
Conflict

Latest analysis

UkraineAlert

Mar 12, 2019

Complications in Tbilisi’s friendship with Kyiv

By
Tamar Chapidze and Andreas Umland

Georgia and Ukraine have become close political allies over the last two decades. That closeness may be currently under threat, however. Despite the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s groundbreaking autocephaly, or independence, from the Russian Orthodox Church at the beginning of 2019, the Georgian Orthodox Church has failed to congratulate Ukrainian authorities or take any official position […]


Civil Society

Nationalism


UkraineAlert

Mar 12, 2019

Why the West should be worried about Ukraine’s flagging fight against graft

By
Oleksandra Drik

The last week of February was a great one for corrupt officials in Ukraine. They finally got off scot-free. Ukraine’s Constitutional Court (CCU) eliminated criminal liability for illicit enrichment. This decision is a major step back in Ukraine’s struggle to fight high-level corruption. (Incidentally, the US Ambassador to Ukraine agrees with this assessment.) And the […]


Corruption

Political Reform


UkraineAlert

Mar 7, 2019

What a $2.8 Million scheme to rip off the state says about corruption in Ukraine

By
Matthew Kupfer

Fictional houses, “dead souls,” but real embezzlement — it sounds like the plot of a horror film. But it’s actually a corruption scheme that ran for over eight years in Ukraine’s Kirovograd Oblast. From 2009 to 2017, the management of the regional gas distribution company, Kirovogradgaz, inserted hundreds of fictional addresses into its electronic billing […]


Corruption

Oil and Gas


UkraineAlert

Mar 6, 2019

Could Zelenskiy be a reformer?

By
Alexander J. Motyl

Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy tops the polls in Ukraine and may be the next president. Some argue that Zelenskiy is the country’s only shot at reform and that he might be able to break the old system.     Could Zelenskiy be a reformer? The short answer is: No. Here’s why. The American political scientist, Samuel Huntington, […]


Elections

Political Reform


UkraineAlert

Mar 5, 2019

European involvement with Nord Stream 2 is a deal with the devil

By
Stephen Blank

Apart from the bypassing of Ukraine and the potential corrupting of German politics, Nord Stream 2 essentially forces German and Eastern European states and customers to subsidize Russian state expenses and unwittingly assist in Naftogaz’s destruction.


Energy Markets & Governance

European Union


UkraineAlert

Mar 5, 2019

Their brand is crisis

By
Melinda Haring

Exactly five years ago, the country’s most important independent crisis communications center was set up in Kyiv in less than forty-eight hours. It started with a text message and a series of phone calls. Shortly after the protesters in the Maidan won and former Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych fled on February 22, 2014, Russia’s “little […]


Civil Society

Democratic Transitions


UkraineAlert

Mar 4, 2019

Why do so few presidential candidates support NATO and EU membership?

By
Taras Kuzio

Out of forty-two candidates who are running for president in the Ukrainian elections on March 31, only eleven support NATO and EU membership. This represents a lower proportion of supporters than the over 300 deputies who voted on three occasions to change the constitution to include those two goals. Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party and the Radical […]


Defense Policy

Elections


UkraineAlert

Mar 4, 2019

Who is ready to lead Ukraine?

By
Kostiantyn Romashko

It’s election season in Ukraine. While there are forty-two candidates officially registered, the competition, according to recent polls, comes down to three: incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and newcomer and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy. In January, UkraineAlert examined the foreign policy views of the five leading candidates. Now we narrow the focus […]


Defense Policy

Elections


UkraineAlert

Mar 1, 2019

No good deed goes unpunished in Ukraine

By
Olena Halushka and Olena Shcherban

Ukraine is in danger of backsliding, big time, and few people realize just how serious it is. This week, the Constitutional Court eliminated a law which made corrupt officials liable for illicit enrichment. This will immediately result in the closure of sixty-five high-profile criminal cases. The court decision may jeopardize Ukraine’s relations with international institutions. […]


Corruption

Political Reform


UkraineAlert

Feb 28, 2019

Why Poroshenko doesn’t deserve a second term

By
Diane Francis

Ukraine needs a change. The latest scandal, involving allegations of massive profiteering from the war against Russia by well-connected Ukrainians, proves the need for a new leader in the upcoming presidential election. Allegations are that the son of a close business partner of President Petro Poroshenko sold smuggled Russian parts to Ukrainian defense factories at […]


Conflict

Corruption

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spotlight

Resilience in the face of adversity

Ukraine’s transformation

Ukraine has moved tentatively toward an open society and market economy since independence. The country has held several democratic elections and made halting progress in addressing corruption and state control in its economy. Since the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Ukraine has undertaken significant governance and economic reform and moved decisively toward a Europe-Atlantic foreign policy. Since 2022, Ukraine has resiliently continued to advance some reforms despite fighting for its very existence against the full-scale Russian invasion.

Learn more about Ukraine

The KGB and Me

UkraineAlert
Dec 5, 2024

Ukraine’s entrepreneurial class can drive the country’s economic recovery

The Ukrainian SME sector has demonstrated remarkable wartime resilience and is poised to be at the forefront of efforts to create a modern, innovative, postwar economy, writes Anton Waschuk.

Read More

The KGB and Me

UkraineAlert
Oct 1, 2024

Ukraine needs international investors to maintain defense tech momentum

By
Mykhailo Fedorov

Ukraine’s rapidly expanding defense tech sector can play a game-changing role in the war against Russia but Ukrainian companies need international investment, writes Ukraine’s Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov.

Artificial Intelligence
Conflict

The KGB and Me

UkraineAlert
Jun 13, 2024

Ukraine officially embraces English as historic westward pivot continues

By
Oleksiy Goncharenko

By officially embracing English, Ukrainians aim to support their country’s historic pivot away from Moscow and return to the European community of nations, writes Oleksiy Goncharenko.

Civil Society
Conflict

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.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values, and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia, and Central Asia in the East.

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Content

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

UkraineAlert

Feb 15, 2017

Arm Ukraine Now

By Alexander J. Motyl

The case against providing lethal weapons to Ukraine has rested on a simple argument: If the United States provides arms to Kyiv, Moscow will escalate the war in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin would up the ante with even more arms or intensify its military pressure on Ukraine. According to this logic, since escalation benefits no […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 9, 2017

What’s Behind the Flare-Up in Eastern Ukraine?

By Volodymyr Yermolenko and Tetyana Ogarkova

On January 29, the fighting in Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine within Ukrainian government-controlled territory, seriously escalated. The fighting began close to the demarcation line and six kilometers north of Donetsk (see map), and continued until at least February 3. According to official reports, thirteen Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 93 were wounded since […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 8, 2017

Six Outrageous Lies Russian Disinformation Peddled about Europe in 2016

By Jakub Janda and Ilyas Sharibzhanov

Russian disinformation is working overtime to undermine European democracies. Much of the disinformation in 2016 came from original Russian sources that presented poorly digested information designed to provoke and to push an agenda that the Kremlin finds favorable. It aims to disconnect ordinary European citizens from supranational EU institutions and national politicians. With key elections in […]

Germany Northern Europe

UkraineAlert

Feb 8, 2017

Women Held Up Half the Sky to Defend Ukraine

By Diane Francis

In China, women are poetically referred to as “half the sky.” During the most dangerous hours of Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, when tanks and water cannons and snipers were trained on protesters, roughly half of the Ukrainian activists were females of all ages. Now, the new film “Women of Maidan” beautifully portrays the critical role […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Feb 8, 2017

Ukraine’s Next Big Gas Deadline Is Two Years Away: Will It Be Ready?

By Oksana Bedratenko

The European gas market has become more integrated and more competitive since the 2009 gas crisis when Russia turned off the tap for nearly a week and Europe practically froze. Europe has increased the resilience of its gas system by building interconnections between pipelines, expanding its storage network, and diversifying gas supplies by creating infrastructure […]

Russia Ukraine
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