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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

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

Sep 1, 2016

Paul Manafort’s Ukrainian Legacy

By Sergii Leshchenko

I have seen Paul Manafort twice in my life. The first time was in 2007 during a Ukrainian lunch at Morosani Hotel in Davos, Switzerland, where Viktor Yanukovych came to speak. The second time was at a solemn reception in honor of Yanukovych’s 2010 inauguration at the Ukrainian House in Kyiv; Manfort arrived with oligarch […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 31, 2016

Anti-Corruption Cases Are Finally Moving Forward in Ukraine

By Adrian Karatnycky

Something is stirring in Ukraine’s war on corruption. Since the Maidan protests of 2013-14 toppled the regime of former President Viktor Yanukovych and revealed the details of the criminality and venality of his inner circle, attacking corruption has been a focal point of public expectations. Important progress has been made on key reforms. Under the […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 31, 2016

Russia and Turkey: Rapprochement and Its Implications

By John E. Herbst

The rapprochement between Russia and Turkey is a significant geopolitical development that increases the leverage of each nation. Where the interests of Moscow and Ankara do not conflict, their new relationship will be useful to both. Yet their different interests limit the significance of the new amity.

Russia Turkey

UkraineAlert

Aug 29, 2016

Have Ukraine’s Reforms Stalled?

By Anders Åslund

Few Ukrainians realize how impressive their economic reforms were in 2015. The question today is whether that reform wave will continue, or has come to a halt. The slashing of energy subsidies by 10 percent of GDP by unifying energy prices from 2014 to 2016 was most important. As a consequence, Ukraine’s public expenditures fell […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 29, 2016

E-Declaration—and Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Strategy—in Jeopardy

By Josh Cohen

A key element of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agenda is at a crossroads—and whether it is implemented on August 31 will indicate Kyiv’s commitment to reform. In October 2014, a new law requiring Ukrainian public officials to file an electronic declaration disclosing all of their financial assets was passed by parliament. This e-declaration law mandates that officials […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 29, 2016

Three Mythologies of European Security

By Stephen Blank

Samuel Johnson famously told his biographer James Boswell, “Clear your mind of cant.” In thinking about European security, we should do so, too.

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 26, 2016

How One University Defied Putin and His Armed Mob

By Melinda Haring

On July 7, 2014, Russian-backed separatists entered Donetsk and occupied four dormitories at Donetsk National University; armed gunmen expelled students from their rooms in the middle of the night. Nine days later, the separatists seized the entire university. During that summer, separatists stole at least seventeen university vehicles and converted student dorms into barracks for […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 25, 2016

Ukraine: Forwards or Backwards? A Response to Thomas Theiner and James Brooke

By Martin Nunn

When driving a car, it is essential to look forward to assess changing road conditions, new obstacles, and new opportunities. Prudent drivers—and investors—regularly check the rear view mirrors, but their main focus is on the future.

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 25, 2016

Does Ukraine Need an Anti-Corruption Court?

By Thomas Firestone

The recent scandal surrounding alleged payments made to Paul Manafort by the former Ukrainian government has again cast a spotlight on corruption in Ukraine. Whatever one thinks of the Manafort story, no one can dispute that Ukrainians are entitled to an honest government that does not steal from them. But how can Ukraine achieve this […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 23, 2016

Russia is Surrounding Ukraine, but Where’s the West?

By Aaron Korewa

In recent weeks, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been doing what he is best at: war mongering. It began with the Kremlin’s accusation that Ukrainian leaders had “chosen terror over peace,” despite the fact Russia has not been able to produce any credible evidence of the alleged “sabotage plot” in Crimea. Additionally, neither the OSCE’s […]

Russia Ukraine