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 Threatens Ukrainian Pilot Nadiya Savchenko with 25-Year Jail Term

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 Threatens Ukrainian Pilot Nadiya Savchenko with 25-Year Jail Term

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 Threatens Ukrainian Pilot Nadiya Savchenko with 25-Year Jail Term

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

Oct 23, 2018

How Ukraine’s Never Ending Transition Makes the Rich Richer and Everyone Else Poorer

By
Tymofiy Mylovanov and Richard van Weelden

After twenty-seven years of independence, the Ukrainian economy continues to struggle. The country appears to be stuck in partial transition from the command to market economy. Many state-owned companies have been privatized, but many more remain in the custody of the state and are mismanaged. There is corporate governance and independent boards, but the assets […]


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 22, 2018

Good News: Ukraine Finally Gets New IMF Agreement

By
Anders Åslund

On October 19, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it had finally reached a staff-level agreement with Ukraine on renewed lending. Ukraine hasn’t received any IMF funds since April 2017. Experts had warned that without an IMF tranche, Ukraine’s economy might face a serious financial crisis this fall.


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 18, 2018

Church Splits, and Putin Loses Big

By
Stephen Blank

Ukraine has just won a tremendous victory by obtaining the right of autocephaly, or the right to constitute the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as fully independent and free of any subservience to Moscow. This victory represents a shattering blow to Vladimir Putin’s pretenses of a Russian world (Russkii Mir) and the entire arcana imperii (Imperial relics) […]


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 17, 2018

The New Cold War Could Learn a Lot from the Old One

By
John E. Herbst

Territories between great powers—borderlands—have always been areas of strife. So it is with the countries caught between Russia and the West, those that were once part of the Soviet Union or firmly within its sphere of influence. Much of Europe has consolidated and, with the United States, established a lasting liberal democratic order, but Russia […]


Moldova

The Caucasus


UkraineAlert

Oct 17, 2018

How Ukraine Can Avoid Disaster in 2019

By
Taras Kuzio

Ukraine’s 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections are the most important since the country became independent nearly three decades ago. If next year’s elections follow those held in 2014 when five pro-reform political forces won a constitutional majority, Ukraine’s European integration and withdrawal from the Russian world will be assured by the next election cycle in […]


Russia

Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 16, 2018

Ukraine, Anti-Semitism, Racism, and the Far Right​

By
Adrian Karatnycky

October 14 saw the latest in a string of annual mass marches by the far right in Ukraine. As many as 10,000 people participated, mainly young men, chanting fiercely. A nighttime torchlight parade with signs proclaiming “We’ll return Ukraine to Ukrainians,” contained echoes of Nazi-style symbolism. Lax law enforcement and indifference by the security services to the operations of the far right is being noticed by extremists from abroad who […]


Russia

Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 15, 2018

What Really Happened in Constantinople Last Week

By
Cyril Hovorun

Last week Ukraine’s Orthodox Church got confirmation that it will likely receive the independence from Moscow that it has long sought. The issue is complex, and the terminology foreign to most readers. The issue of the Ukrainian church is similar to an iceberg. What appears above the surface is political, but the largest part underneath […]


Russia

Ukraine


UkraineAlert

Oct 14, 2018

Kyiv Patriarchate Vs. Moscow Patriarchate: David Triumphs Over Goliath

By
Margo Gontar

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church will become independent. It’s hard to overestimate the significance of this change; Moscow will no longer have power over it. And that’s exactly what Russia cannot tolerate.


Civil Society

Russia


UkraineAlert

Oct 11, 2018

Three more reasons why I’m optimistic about Ukraine

By
Melinda Haring

There are plenty of principled, young and not-so-young people, in the pipeline.


Civil Society

Corruption


UkraineAlert

Oct 9, 2018

Why Can’t Ukraine Kill Corruption?

By
Mykola Vorobiov

Ukraine still struggles to overcome its core disease of corruption. Since the 2014 Euromaidan, a number of anticorruption institutions have been created in close cooperation with Western partners, including the United States. Among them are the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP), the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), and the Anti-Corruption […]


Ukraine

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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 Threatens Ukrainian Pilot Nadiya Savchenko with 25-Year Jail Term

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 Threatens Ukrainian Pilot Nadiya Savchenko with 25-Year Jail Term

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 Threatens Ukrainian Pilot Nadiya Savchenko with 25-Year Jail Term

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

Jul 31, 2015

Russia Threatens Ukrainian Pilot Nadiya Savchenko with 25-Year Jail Term

By Irena Chalupa

Nadiya Savchenko, Ukraine’s most famous female military officer, has languished in a Moscow prison for more than a year since Moscow-backed separatists captured her in eastern Ukraine last June and smuggled across the border to Russia shackled, her head covered by a sack. Now her captors have moved her again—and again under the cover of […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Jul 30, 2015

Euromaidan’s Shockwaves: An Exile in Ukraine Recalls Fleeing his Native Kyrgyzstan

By Matthew Kupfer

On a recent warm summer night, Ilya Lukash sat in a bar near Kyiv’s trendy Kontraktova Square, drinking a beer and chatting with his friends in Ukrainian, Russian, and English. In a red T-shirt emblazoned with patriotic Ukrainian slogans, he could easily have been any one of the countless young, educated, pro-democracy Ukrainians who in […]

Central Asia Russia

UkraineAlert

Jul 27, 2015

Here’s How the EU Can Get Putin’s Attention

By Andreas Umland

How would the West react to a major escalation of the war in eastern Ukraine? What would Brussels and Washington do if Russia continues to send troops there? Even though analysts often suggest arming Ukraine with defensive weapons, what people sometimes forget is that the West is still, by far, Russia’s largest trade and investment […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Jul 27, 2015

Ukraine’s IDP Crisis Worsens as Local Attitudes Harden

By Kateryna Moroz and Olena Vynogradova

Ukraine officially has 1,381,953 internally displaced persons (IDPs), the country’s Ministry of Social Policy (MoSP) reported July 10. Overall, more than 2.3 million Ukrainians—including IDPs and those seeking refuge abroad—have been uprooted by conflict since March 2014. Yet the actual number of IDPs remains unknown and is likely to be higher, since the official figure […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Jul 25, 2015

The Future of Ukraine’s Default

By Yuriy Gorodnichenko

On July 24, Ukraine paid a $120 million coupon to service its sovereign debt. In many ways, this event is a moment of truth: it signals that there is a prospect of reaching an agreement with Ukraine’s creditors. Earlier this year, Ukraine signed a major deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF agreed […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Jul 24, 2015

Kremlin Stages Fake Separatist Stunt in Lviv

By Halya Coynash

Western leaders pressing Ukraine to give into Russian demands and offer the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics autonomy would be well-advised to take note of the other parts of Ukraine which, according to Russian media, are also demanding self-rule. On July 17, approximately twenty people in Lviv staged a blitzkrieg demonstration with banners demanding […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Jul 24, 2015

The Enemy Within: Paramilitaries and the Ukrainian State

By Peter Sattler

Ukrainian paramilitaries pose an increasingly existential threat to Kyiv. Earlier this year, Kyiv launched an initiative to bring them under their direct control. But despite their nominal subordination to Kyiv’s security services, these groups operate with minimal supervision and maintain financial independence. Their fighting capacity breeds instability and violence. More recently, Right Sector is undermining […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Jul 22, 2015

Reform Agenda in Kyiv on Slow Burn, But in Odesa, Saakashvili Already Delivers

By Kateryna Smagliy

“I come away from this visit to Odesa with a sense of optimism,” wrote US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt after his recent trip there. After I posted Pyatt’s article to my Facebook page in an attempt to diminish the growing fatigue of fellow Ukrainians over the mixed results of the new government’s reforms, angry reactions followed. […]

Russia The Caucasus

UkraineAlert

Jul 22, 2015

We Are All Ukrainians Now

By Diane M. Francis

My first visit to Ukraine was in February 1992 and the City of Kyiv was gray, bleak and joyless as was the rest of the Soviet Union. Last month I re-visited—23 years and several other assignments later—to find a new nation of extremes. There is prosperity and there is poverty; there is peace and war; […]

Ukraine
20150720MH172event

UkraineAlert

Jul 21, 2015

One Year After MH17 Shootdown, Brazen Act Over Ukraine Still Poisons Atmosphere

By Larry Luxner

Simon Ostrovsky will never forget the moment he learned that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had fallen from the sky, with 298 passengers and crew aboard. “I was on a train from Kyiv to Kharkiv reading my Twitter feed, and something came down about a plane crash. Somebody said it was a Malaysian plane,” the Soviet-born […]

Russia Ukraine
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