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

Russia Is a “Troll State,” Not a Rogue State

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

Russia Is a “Troll State,” Not a Rogue State

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

Russia Is a “Troll State,” Not a Rogue State

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

Russia Is a “Troll State,” Not a Rogue State

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

Russia Is a “Troll State,” Not a Rogue State

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

Russia Is a “Troll State,” Not a Rogue State

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

Dec 2, 2015

Russia Is a “Troll State,” Not a Rogue State

By Andrew Kornbluth

In the eighteen months since Russia annexed Crimea, the world has been alternately captivated and bewildered by the wild swings and sudden shifts that describe Russian foreign policy under President Vladimir Putin. Particularly alarming for those who fear a direct clash between Russia and the West has been Putin’s tendency to swerve between antagonism and […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Dec 1, 2015

Mykolayiv Makes a Surprising Turn Toward the West

By Hannah Thoburn

Built on a series of spits and peninsulas, the Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv feels surrounded by water. It is here that in 1789, Russian Prince Gregory Potemkin built the shipyards that would repair Russian Empire ships fighting the Ottoman Empire, shipyards that remained of such importance that the city was closed to foreigners for most […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Nov 30, 2015

“The human rights situation in Crimea today is deplorable,” German MP Says

By Christoph Bergner

Editor’s Note: This piece is adapted from a speech Dr. Christoph Bergner, a member of Germany’s Bundestag, gave at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Foundation on October 21, 2015. I would like to thank the organizers of this event for making human rights issues in Crimea the main topic. Even if other news is currently making headlines, we […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Nov 30, 2015

Ukraine Two Years After Euromaidan: What Has Been Accomplished?

By Anders Åslund

Two years ago, popular protests erupted against Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych on Kyiv’s Maidan. Since then, Ukraine’s economy has deteriorated sharply, with a contraction of 18 percent in two years, but the Poroshenko Bloc was the biggest party by far in the October 25 local elections. One might say that the Ukrainian nation has […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Nov 24, 2015

Russia Not a Reliable Partner in Fighting Terrorism

By Stephen Blank

In the wake of recent terror attacks in Paris, President François Hollande has called for Russian and American cooperation against ISIS, joining many other policymakers who have voiced the need for cooperation between Russian and American intelligence agencies against Islamic terrorism. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged his generals to treat French forces as “allies.” […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Nov 24, 2015

Making Sense of Mariupol’s Messy Elections

By Vera Zimmerman

As cities finished counting the votes from Ukraine’s second round of mayoral elections, Mariupol and Krasnoarmiisk in the Donetsk region still haven’t held elections. Mariupol, which over the last nineteen months has been a strategic target of pro-Russian separatists, has become a political battleground. Local elections that were supposed to take place on October 25 […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Nov 23, 2015

Ukraine Is Not a Bargaining Chip for Putin’s Support Against ISIS

By Ihor Kozak

A month and a half ago, while traveling along the frontlines of eastern Ukraine, I predicted that the Minsk II ceasefire agreements would not be respected by the Kremlin and its puppet Peoples’ Republics. It was clear to me—in spite of a tentative ceasefire put in place on October 2—that the situation in the Donbas […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Nov 18, 2015

Making Sense of Ukraine’s Local Elections: Voters Put Multiple Parties in Office

By Brian Mefford

As the ballots are counted in Ukraine’s November 15 runoff elections, the preliminary results show no national mandate or overarching themes. Instead, in a positive step for the country’s democratic development, voters dispersed power widely and put multiple political parties into office. Here’s a quick rundown of the big races and the big surprises: Kyiv: […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Nov 17, 2015

Putin Transformed from Stubborn Holdout to Star at G20

By Anders Åslund

At the G-20 meeting in Antalya, Turkey, on November 16, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin proposed that Russia could restructure the $3 billion Eurobond that he lent former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in December 2013. It comes due on December 20. This was a sudden change of policy. Until that moment, the Kremlin had insisted on […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Nov 16, 2015

The Economics of Rebellion in Eastern Ukraine

By Yuri M. Zhukov

New research demonstrates why the conflict has not spread beyond Donetsk and Luhansk In April 2014, angry mobs and armed men stormed administrative buildings and police stations in eastern Ukraine, waving Russian flags and proclaiming the establishment of “Peoples’ Republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk. At the time, some observers predicted that the “pro-Russian” uprising would […]

Russia Ukraine
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