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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.


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UkraineAlert

May 15, 2017

Ukrainian Jews Find Safe Haven, Challenges in Israel

By
Larry Luxner

Every Sunday and Tuesday evening, Alena Sapiro, 26, takes the hour-long bus ride from her home in Lod to attend Ramit Avidan’s intermediate Hebrew classes at Ulpan Gordon, a Tel Aviv school for new immigrants run by the Israeli Ministry of Absorption. Sapiro, who helps develop mobile apps for a local software company, came on […]


Israel


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

May 15, 2017

Ukraine PM Groisman Visits Israel, Marking Improvement in Delicate Bilateral Relations

By
Larry Luxner

The May 14 arrival of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groisman to Israel signals a rapprochement of ties that suffered a temporary blow last December, when Ukraine—along with thirteen other countries—voted to support a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Groisman is the first Jewish prime minister in Ukrainian history. He […]


Israel


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

May 10, 2017

Q&A: Will We Ever Get to the Bottom of Russian Hacking in the US Election?

By
Melinda Haring

President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey on May 9. Comey had been leading a criminal investigation into whether Trump’s advisers colluded with the Russian government to influence the results of the 2016 presidential election. Trump justified the firing by pointing to the way Comey handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, […]


Russia


UkraineAlert

May 10, 2017

Ukraine Needs Tough Love and IMF Conditionality, Leshchenko Urges

By
Diane Francis

“The IMF should not give one more dollar to Ukraine until the Anti-Corruption Court is in operation,” said Sergii Leshchenko in a May 9 telephone interview. Leshchenko is a hero of the Revolution of Dignity, a lanky and serious journalist-turned-politician who has risked his life and career for years to fight corruption in Ukraine. He’s […]


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

May 10, 2017

Russia Deploys Banned Missile and Brags about It

By
Semen Kabakaev

Thirty years ago, on December 8, 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which entered into force on June 1, 1988. The parties pledged not to produce, test or deploy ballistic and cruise land-based missiles of medium range (from 1,000 to 5,500 kilometers). Elimination of all declared missiles and […]


Russia


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

May 9, 2017

How to Win Friends and Influence People on a Global Scale

By
Alexandra Hall Hall

Dale Carnegie’s famous self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, centers on investing in personal relationships in order to achieve success. President Donald Trump has demonstrated an instinctive understanding of this principle in the way he has interacted with a succession of world leaders, whether over a round of golf at Mar-a-Lago or […]


The Caucasus


UkraineAlert

May 8, 2017

How Trump Can Fix US-Russia Ties

By
Alexander Vershbow

US President Donald Trump will have his first high-level meeting with a Russian representative this week, when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov comes to the White House following a scheduled meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The stakes are high: about the only thing on which Moscow and Washington agree is that relations are at […]


Russia


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

May 5, 2017

How Not to Become a War Criminal: A Guide for Russian Soldiers

By
Valentyn Badrak, Lada Roslycky, Mykhailo Samus, and Volodymyr Kopchak

Few Russian citizens view the Kremlin’s invasion into Ukraine as unlawful. Not many Russian servicemen realize that when they are fighting there, they fight as unnamed, faceless soldiers who lack the protection of international pacts, including the Geneva Conventions. They not only risk death, injury, or abandonment by the state that sent them there; they […]


Russia


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

May 4, 2017

Why Is the Kremlin So Fixated on Phantom Fascists?

By
Peter Dickinson

In April, reports emerged of Kremlin plans to launch a major smear campaign against Russian opposition figurehead Alexey Navalny. Within days, an expensive-looking attack video had appeared anonymously on YouTube, comparing Navalny to Adolf Hitler. The Russian authorities denied any connection to the video, but few believed them. After all, branding opponents as fascists is […]


Russia


Ukraine


UkraineAlert

May 3, 2017

Will Ukrainians Ever Trust the Press?

By
Adam Tismaneanu

Journalism has changed since the Euromaidan, but most Ukrainians still don’t trust the media. Oligarchs continue to own a majority of the major outlets. Since 2014, reformers have established a public broadcasting service and are in the process of privatizing several hundred state-owned newspapers. Those steps may not be enough. The media suffers from a […]


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.

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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UkraineAlert

Sep 4, 2014

DIRECT TRANSLATION: ‘This Is Vladimir Putin’s War’

By Irena Chalupa

Russia’s Former Deputy Prime Minister Explains to Ukrainians Why His Government Has Invaded Their Country Again With Russia again having escalated its war on Ukraine last month (sending in paratroopers from its 76th and 98th Airborne Divisions, plus armor and artillery), few are asking what is really driving the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine’s southeast. […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 28, 2014

DIRECT TRANSLATION: Russian Tycoon “Will No Longer Be Silent” on Ukraine War

By Irena Chalupa

Mikhail Khodorkovsky Calls for General Strike in Russia to Protest Invasion The Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former chairman of Yukos, once Russia’s biggest oil company, is speaking out against the toll that the Kremlin’s undeclared war on Ukraine is taking on Russians. Khodorkovsky, a Putin foe who spent nearly ten years in prison on politically […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 28, 2014

Russia Secretively Buries its Soldiers Killed in the Ukraine War

By Irena Chalupa

Russian military officials stood at a cemetery surrounded by forest in far northwestern Russia, early Tuesday morning, and carefully vetted the army officers, soldiers and family members arriving for a funeral to be held in secrecy. Two paratroopers from Russia’s 76th Airborne Division were to be buried. They died last week – no one would […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 28, 2014

Russian Troops in Ukraine: It’s Really an Invasion After All

By James Rupert

As Media Harden Their Accounts of Russia’s Assault, Will the West Harden Its Response? Russia’s attacks into Ukraine this week (exactly six months after its troops began their invasion of Crimea) are bringing the actual word ”invasion” into media headlines. Atlantic Council analysts and others say the key question now is how hard a response […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 25, 2014

Ukraine’s Independence Day: Opposed Observances

By Irena Chalupa

Rebels Parade Prisoners to Declare That Ukraine Is Nazi-Inspired Ukraine’s government marked the country’s twenty-third anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union yesterday with a military parade and a vow by President Petro Poroshenko to sustain Ukraine’s war against Russian-sponsored separatists in the southeast. In Donetsk, the separatists paraded bruised and dirty Ukrainian soldiers, their […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 14, 2014

Watching For Putin’s Plan ‘B’ in Ukraine

By James Rupert

With Kremlin’s Proxy War Stumbling, Kyiv and West Guard Against ‘Humanitarian Intervention’ As Russia’s government moves its proposed convoy of humanitarian aid toward the war zone in Ukraine that it has created with its support of separatist militias, Ukraine and Western governments are warning it not to try using Russian military forces on the border […]

Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 14, 2014

New Ukraine Orthodox Leader Signals Continued Church Divide

By Irena Chalupa

Ukrainians’ Traditional Loyalty to Moscow Patriarch is Strained by His Close Tie to Kremlin  The longstanding divide between Ukraine’s two main Orthodox churches will continue with little change following the election yesterday of a new leader, or metropolitan, by the Moscow-aligned faction. Metropolitan Onufriy is a religious conservative loyal to his church’s formal subordination to […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 11, 2014

Russian-Backed Rebels Put a Local Man Out Front, But Still Look Divided

By Irena Chalupa

Separatists Show No Unity Under New Donetsk ‘Prime Minister,’ Kremlin Paper Says The Kremlin and its proxy rebellion in southeastern Ukraine seemed to recognize last week that as a supposedly Ukrainian uprising, it should have a titular Ukrainian leader, rather than a Moscow-based Russian ultra-nationalist with ties to the Kremlin. So after three months as […]

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 7, 2014

Putin Will Decide Captured Ukrainian Pilot’s Fate, Her Lawyer Says

By Irena Chalupa

Nadiya Savchenko’s Trial is Political, Not Legal, Says Human Rights Attorney Mark Feygin Although a Russian court is preparing to try Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko on war-related charges, it is Russian President Vladimir Putin who will decide her fate, said Savchenko’s defense attorney, Russian human rights lawyer Mark Feygin.

Russia Ukraine

UkraineAlert

Aug 7, 2014

Kremlin Silences Crimea’s Last Pro-Ukraine TV Station

By Irena Chalupa

Shutdown Virtually Completes Muffling of Crimean Media On August 1, police in Crimea entered the headquarters of the Chornomorska Television Company to shut it down, virtually completing Russia’s silencing of all Ukrainian and independent media on the peninsula five months after its invasion. The Moscow-backed authorities had already halted other Ukrainian broadcasts and have progressively been constricting Chornomorska […]

Russia Ukraine