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.

Stay Updated

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

A Saakashvili Party Comeback? Not in Georgia but Maybe in Ukraine

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

A Saakashvili Party Comeback? Not in Georgia but Maybe in Ukraine

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

A Saakashvili Party Comeback? Not in Georgia but Maybe in Ukraine

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

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


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

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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

A Saakashvili Party Comeback? Not in Georgia but Maybe in Ukraine

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

A Saakashvili Party Comeback? Not in Georgia but Maybe in Ukraine

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

A Saakashvili Party Comeback? Not in Georgia but Maybe in Ukraine

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

May 31, 2016

A Saakashvili Party Comeback? Not in Georgia but Maybe in Ukraine

By Brian Mefford

Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili is preparing for the launch of his political party later this year in Ukraine, but this has not prevented him from pondering a return to politics in his native Georgia. Georgian voters go to the polls on October 8 to elect a new parliament in a contest viewed as a […]

The Caucasus Ukraine

UkraineAlert

May 31, 2016

Exposing Russia’s False NATO Narrative

By Stephen Blank

A staple of Russian, pro-Russian, and so-called realist narratives is that NATO not only reneged on its promises to not enlarge after German reunification, it also rebuffed all Russian efforts to integrate with the organization. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, it is pretty to think so—but that is not the truth. As Mikhail Gorbachev himself said, […]

NATO Russia

UkraineAlert

May 31, 2016

Europe Still in Denial as Russia Ushers in the Age of Hybrid Hostilities

By Peter Dickinson

European leaders will gather in June to discuss whether to extend sanctions against Russia over the Kremlin’s hybrid war in Ukraine. The current sanctions regime will likely remain in place, but the mere fact the subject is up for debate is evidence of Europe’s alarming refusal to acknowledge the new security reality facing the continent. […]

European Union International Organizations

UkraineAlert

May 26, 2016

Europe’s Humanitarian Fatigue Threatens to Engulf Ukraine

By Andrew Kornbluth

Earlier this month, Jean-Claude Juncker and Martin Schulz, presidents of the European Commission and Parliament, respectively, published an appeal for continental solidarity in which they criticized “anyone who believes that the time of the nation-state has come” as “out of touch with reality.” The inaccuracy of Juncker and Schulz’s statement is reflected in the comparative […]

Europe & Eurasia European Union

UkraineAlert

May 26, 2016

The Many Hopes of Nadiya Savchenko

By Irena Chalupa

“I’ve been in a prison cell for two years, I’m not used to people, so I am sorry if I sound harsh,” said Nadiya Savchenko as throngs of journalists and well-wishers crowded around her at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport on May 25. Captured in Ukraine, transferred secretly to Russia where she was tried and sentenced to […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

May 25, 2016

Savchenko’s Return May Unleash Political Earthquake in Ukraine

By Kateryna Kruk

It has finally happened. Nadiya Savchenko is back in Ukraine. The female pilot, who was captured in Ukraine and illegally brought to Russia on falsified charges, became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance against Russian efforts to destabilize the country. A Russian court sentenced Savchenko to twenty-two years for killing two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine, […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

May 23, 2016

Why Ukraine’s Gutsy, Bright, and Articulate Reformers Are Optimistic

By Diane Francis

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. . . . We must have patience till luck turns,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1798. Jefferson wrote this observation to a friend thirteen years after […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

May 23, 2016

Get Real, Europe. Sanctions on Russia Must Stay in Place

By Aaron Korewa

The EU is poised for another discussion on sanctions against Russia when they expire in July. As usual, there are some countries that are wavering for one reason or another. On April 28, French conservative MP Thierry Mariani secured a majority for a non-binding resolution in the French parliament recommending that the EU’s trade limits […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

May 23, 2016

Ukraine’s Parliament Is Getting a Facelift, but Will It Make a Difference?

By Brian Mefford

The newly elected Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Andriy Parubiy, wasted no time in announcing a series of internal reforms for the Ukrainian parliament, which has long been the most hated institution of public life. In the latest International Republican Institute (IRI) poll, 88 percent of Ukrainians viewed the institution unfavorably. Contributing factors to this […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

May 23, 2016

Ukraine Could Join the European Union by 2030

By Anders Åslund

Following the Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine has taken big political and economic steps forward. Today, we need to assess what has been accomplished and what Ukraine should achieve in the next fifteen years. The nation needs to set ambitious goals, aiming for an average economic growth rate of 6-7 percent a year. That kind of […]

European Union International Organizations
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