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.
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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
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.
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.
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.
Made in Moscow: Religious Freedom Abuses Continue in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine
By Mary Ann Glendon and Katrina Lantos Swett
“We cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated,” US President Barack Obama said on September 28 at the UN General Assembly. He was condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its aggressive moves in eastern Ukraine. Much of the world has decried these acts and their most visible […]
For Decentralization to Work, Reformers Must Support Legislation for Strong Local Governance
By Joshua Solomon
As the August 31 grenade attacks, rioting, and violent protests at Ukraine’s Parliament—the Verkhovna Rada—demonstrated quite literally, the Ukrainian decentralization effort is an explosive issue. Constitutional amendments granting local communities greater governing responsibilities have sparked widespread criticism, both in Ukraine and in the West. Some warn that the new system will excessively empower the president […]
The West’s deteriorating relationship with Russia has opened a window of opportunity to offer Eastern European countries a genuine future within the European Union, unrestrained by Moscow. To seize this opportunity, the West should refrain from past policies that, in the end, always put Russia first.
Ukraine’s New Police Are an Expression of a “Civil” State
By Erica Marat
Almost two years after the Euromaidan demonstrations began, most Ukrainians agree that the pace of reforms has been largely disappointing. While many former civil-society activists hold key positions in the government and parliament, corruption continues to plague the country and state institutions cannot provide basic services. Amid the skepticism, one area where there is agreement […]
Ukrainians go to the polls on October 25 to elect mayors and city councils. These local elections matter more than one might expect. The likely passage of a constitutional amendment on decentralization by parliament later this year will give the newly elected mayors and councils more autonomy and authority than ever before.
US President Barack Obama recently derided critics of his foreign policies as offering merely mumbo-jumbo. Yet everyone can plainly see the administration’s shocking degree of across-the-board strategic incomprehension and incompetence in Europe and the Middle East. In fact, European Union diplomats publicly admit that confidence in US policies is plummeting throughout Europe. Therefore, I offer […]
The Forgotten War: A View From Ukraine’s Frontlines
By Ihor Kozak
For a brief moment, it felt like déjà vu. As an officer with the Canadian Armed Forces, I visited several hot spots, witnessing my share of misery and destruction. Now I am in the Donbas, the war-torn region of eastern Ukraine. Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has struggled to shed its Soviet colonial past […]
Evolution, Not Revolution, Is the Way to Save Ukraine, Says Leading Anti-Corruption Crusader
By Diane Francis
Russian President Vladimir Putin is pivoting and wants to withdraw from the Donbas but keep Crimea, according to Iegor Soboliev, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s anti-corruption committee. “He wants to give it back to us right now. He doesn’t need the Donbas,” he said in an interview on October 5. “Unfortunately, he will try […]
What Russia hoped would be a small, victorious war has turned into the “geostrategic disaster of a new cold war,” writes Volodymyr Horbulin, a respected foreign policy analyst currently advising Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. In an article in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Horbulin argues that the main participants in the war have exhausted themselves. The Donbas has […]
Don’t Blame the Oligarchs: Why Have Ukraine’s Cultural Reforms Gone Nowhere?
By Kateryna Smagliy
The demonizing of Ukrainian oligarchs as major impediments to democratization and reform has become a shared mantra of Western and domestic pundits alike. Whenever explaining the slow pace of Ukraine’s changes after the Euromaidan, analysts argue that oligarchs only gained influence and that by controlling whole chunks of the state apparatus, mass media, and economy, […]
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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