FSI scholars are now engaged with their network of Ukrainian alums, checking in on their safety and plans, while also advocating on behalf of a democratic Ukraine in major media outlets. McFaul has given Congressional testimony, written op-eds, been involved in back-channel discussions with senior administration officials, and even appeared on the Stephen Colbert show to discuss the issue. He is the co-editor of "Revolution in Orange," a 2006 book that examines Ukraine’s democratic breakthroughs.

Francis Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow and former director of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), has recently published articles on the strategic situation in Ukraine while sharing everyone’s deep concerns for Ukrainians under assault.

“We’ve been trying to help them in any way we can,” he said.

To deepen FSI’s expertise on Ukraine, the institute has established a Director’s Fund for Ukraine Initiatives, which will provide discretionary support for research, teaching, and policy outreach on Ukraine.

From Activism to Political Leadership

Well before the Russian invasion, FSI was already helping Ukraine cultivate its democracy.

“Our theory of change,” Fukuyama said, “is that we understand we can’t do things like provide policy advice very well to a country that’s so far away from us. But what we can do is try to help train a new generation of leaders who will inherit power, and in the near future, hopefully lead the country to a better outcome as we keep in touch with and support them.”

Toward this, the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program provides a 10-month academic training fellowship in support of three mid-career practitioners working actively as policy-makers, legal professionals, entrepreneurs and leaders of civil society organizations in Ukraine.
 

Alums of this and other programs include Artem Romaniukov, a civil society activist now in Ukraine who trained in the Emerging Leaders Program during 2019-20; the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, a visiting scholar in 2021; and Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Draper Hills alum from 2018 and Ukrainian journalist who’s now writing about the war, including social media posts in real-time – “I’m reporting on the ground in Kyiv on what I see with my own eyes,” she wrote.

Oleksandra “Sasha” Ustinova, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and alum of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program (2018-19), is lobbying members of Congress. “We are still negotiating for help. And I tell them that every day of negotiations is thousands of lives,” Ustinova told the Washington Post. She was in Washington, D.C., when Russia invaded Ukraine, and has been unable to return.

Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, a Ukrainian rock musician who also holds a degree in theoretical physics, was a visiting scholar in 2017-18. After his time at Stanford he created a new political party, Holos, in his country. More recently, after the Russians bombed a children’s and maternity ward in Mariupol, he posted a video on Twitter on his observations while assisting on the scene there. In another video, Vakarchuk is seen singing to Ukrainians who are sheltering in the subways. He has traveled to major cities during the conflict — including badly targeted ones such as Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhya — raising morale among troops and civilians.

Changes may be afoot for the Emerging Leaders Program. Fukuyama said it may not be viable for next year, because Ukrainian men are currently not allowed to leave the country. “One thing we’ve been thinking of is possibly converting that program into a more research-oriented program on Ukraine,” he said.

Fukuyama said that for the Leadership Academy for Development, rather than bringing people to campus, FSI sends faculty to countries like Ukraine to deliver one-week intensive training sessions to classes of 25. He says the academy has been held in Ukraine a half dozen or so times, including in its capital of Kyiv, with an estimated 150-200 participants.

Making the transition from civil society into actual politics is one of the key messages in the 17-year-old Draper Hills Summer Fellows program, Fukuyama noted. An alumna, Svitlana Zalishchuk (’11), won a seat in Ukraine’s parliament, along with alumni Serhiy Leshchenko (’13) and Mustafa Nayyem (’14). Before joining government, Zalishchuk led a Ukrainian NGO focused on freedom of speech. After serving in parliament, all three of these alums are now working directly to defeat Putin’s invading army: Leshchenko is an aide to Zelenskyy’s chief of staff; Nayyem is the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine, and Zalishchuk works for Ukraine’s state-owned gas company, Naftogaz.

In a recent BBC interview, Zalishchuk said, “I think the Ukrainian president made it very clear — he will not surrender, the Ukrainian army is backing him, the Ukrainian people are backing him, and the international community also demonstrated an incredible unity to stand up to Putin.”

Long before the Russian invasion, FSI’s special relationship with Ukraine attracted prominent coverage. In 2016, The New Yorker article, “Reforming Ukraine After the Revolutions,” described how the Draper Hills Summer Fellows program helped Ukrainian journalists Leshchenko and Nayyem rise to political leadership around the time of Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in 2014.
 

Fukuyama explained how the program works: “We teach them about the structures of democracy as if they were Stanford undergraduates – this is what different political systems look like, here is how you can effect political change.”

Another on-campus program designed to offer research and teaching opportunities to former senior government officials is the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow program, which brought the former prime minister of Ukraine, Oleksiy Honcharuk, to FSI in 2021. Honcharuk said then, “Stanford is the best place to rethink Ukraine’s past and plan the future, and that’s why I am especially happy to be here and add my expertise and experience to this important process.”

Alum Perspective from the Frontlines

Artem Romaniukov ('20), is now in Ukraine fighting the Russians with a rifle in hand and his family nearby.

“I was with my wife and six-year-old daughter in Kyiv when Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began. I grabbed my family and brought them to a place I thought they would be safer. Then I immediately volunteered to join the Ukrainian Defense Force. I have already seen active fire, which has resulted in a dreadful number of casualties, both for Ukrainians and Russians,” he wrote in an article for FSI. He is currently in Western Ukraine awaiting a new deployment.

An entrepreneur with his own start-up company, Mriya, Romaniukov worries about the consequences the war is having on Ukraine's economy. 'For my own company, and with many Ukrainian businesses, we have managed to move our operations to safe places and are ready to export services. But international companies are concerned about the security situation and whether it is viable to place orders with Ukrainian firms. But it is crucial to keep the Ukrainian economy working right now.”

Ukrainian Student Perspectives

In a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, Ukrainian and other students on campus have found solace and solidarity at teach-ins and events hosted by FSI scholars, sharing what they’re doing to help family and friends back home and to raise awareness on campus.

Writing in the Stanford Magazine, Anastasiia Malenko, a junior studying economics and political science, described an online chat she was participating in with friends back home when the first Russian bombs began hitting Ukrainian cities. On the day after the invasion, Malenko organized a protest with a Stanford Ukrainian student group, urging immediate sanctions on Russia as well as military and humanitarian aid to the country. She also helped create a website, standwithukraine.how, and joined in the writing of a Stanford Ukrainian Community Joint Statement on Russia’s War Against Ukraine.

She later wrote in an email, “My family and friends are now demonstrating continued resilience in their fight for freedom against the Russian invaders. From coordinating humanitarian aid to managing local volunteer networks, they are writing the history of an independent democratic Ukraine.”

Malenko, who will join the CDDRL honors program as a senior, considers herself fortunate be in touch with friends and family back home. “As the rest of the world, I am hearing their stories of resilience, perseverance, pain, and calls for help … One of the bright moments is telling them about the support I’ve been witnessing on the Stanford campus and beyond — it makes them feel seen.”

She said FSI’s programs fully demonstrate the institute’s commitment to Ukraine. “Through my undergraduate career, these programs have been invaluable as they provided room for Ukrainian perspective in a field of Eastern European studies, usually dominated by the focus on Russian colonial history.”

Stanford’s Unwavering Support

FSI’s support of Ukrainian democracy reflects what Stanford stands for as a university dedicated to research, teaching and engagement – its slogan is “the winds of freedom blow.” When President Marc Tessier-Lavigne addressed the Faculty Senate on Feb. 24 shortly after the Russian invasion, he said, “There are scholars within our community who bring experience and deep insight to this range of issues, and who will help policymakers as they navigate this situation.”

He added, “It is important to remember that an international conflict of this scale will have effects and consequences for many members of our community, in many different ways. This is a difficult moment, and my thoughts are with all who are affected.”

A few days earlier, as Russian forces massed and an attack loomed, Tessier-Lavigne had joined McFaul to meet with Ukrainian students and scholars who had assembled for a dinner gathering at the latter’s home. The Stanford president was also instrumental in lighting up the iconic Hoover Tower on March 11 in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag as a show of solidarity with the country and its people.

Policy, Research and Discovery

Steve Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and William J. Perry Research Fellow at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), said the Ukrainians have resisted the Russian invasion with courage, tenacity and determination, surprising many, particularly in the Kremlin, which significantly underestimated the resistance that the Russian military would encounter.

“For many Ukrainians, this is an existential fight.  If they lose, they lose their democracy, however imperfect it might be.  And they also lose the vision that many, particularly the young, hold for Ukraine: to become a normal European state, such as the Czech Republic or Slovenia” he said.

Pifer has worked with CDDRL on conferences and panels on Ukraine and has many relationships with fellows from the Emerging Leaders Program. “That is a great project that gives young, rising Ukrainians the chance to study and think at Stanford about how best they can develop a modern Ukrainian state. And they have gone back to do some remarkable things.”

He says CDDRL maintains an active network of Ukrainian alumni of its programs:  “It has been interesting to keep up with some of them, both via Zooms and in person when I have visited Kyiv.”

FSI scholars like Pifer have long studied Ukraine, Russia and post-Soviet bloc nations in the context of emerging democracies. In 2002, McFaul wrote about the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the prospects for democracy in Eastern European countries like Ukraine.
 

In his article “The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World,” McFaul noted that “the balance of power and ideologies at the time of transition had path dependent consequences for subsequent regime emergence,” whether democratic, partially democratic or autocratic.

In another essay, “Indifferent to Democracy” prescient of FSI’s future Ukrainian efforts, he argued for boosting democratic aspirations in those countries by “empowering human rights activists through high-level meetings with U.S. officials” and launching “assistance programs designed to strengthen the independent media, trade unions, political parties, civil society and the rule of law.”

In February of this year, as Russia built up its forces near Ukraine, McFaul wrote about Russian president Putin’s greatest fear: “To Putin, the Orange Revolution undermined a core objective of his grand strategy: to establish a privileged and exclusive sphere of influence across the territory that once comprised the Soviet Union.”

Rose Gottemoeller, the former Deputy Secretary General of NATO and Steven C. Házy Lecturer at CISAC, has written that, “In some ways, the simplest solution for NATO and the United States would be for Ukraine to decide that it didn’t want to join NATO, take it out of the constitution, and reinsert a provision about nonalignment.” However, she notes that the U.S. should make it clear that Ukraine won’t be ready for this for decades, and that a “moratorium is the best way of doing this at this point.”

On Russia’s misinformation efforts, Kathryn Stoner, the Mosbacher Director at CDDRL and an expert on Russian politics, told the Los Angeles Times that Russian outlets like RT harbor Russian propaganda.

“It is definitely the mouthpiece of the Russian government,” said Stoner, author of the 2021 book, "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order."

Fukuyama makes an optimistic case for what the post-invasion world might look like: “A Russian defeat will make possible a ‘new birth of freedom,’ and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.”
 

The Pentagon estimates that 600 Russian missiles have been fired at Ukrainian targets in the first 10 days of war alone. Additionally, the infamous abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant has been seized by Russian forces and, most recently, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Enerhodar has been attacked and occupied by armed Russian soldiers. Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and Russian projectiles started a localized fire in an auxiliary building on the site on March 3, 2020.

Russian forces have also cut off the power supply to the Chernobyl reactor and containment site. This means that spent nuclear fuel is not being cooled at the site in accordance to internationally recognized standards. The head of the Chernobyl nuclear plant has said that the back-up generators have enough fuel to power the site for 48 hours. We can only guess what might happen after that. If this were not enough, there is still ongoing shelling at a nuclear research facility in Kharkiv. The current conditions there are unknown.

Despite these chaotic circumstances, the SaveEcoBot team, in coordination with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, has put a lot of effort into radiation monitoring and informing the public about changes in background radiation. We’ve been set back in this critical work by the damages done to our monitoring equipment by Russians, but Ukrainian technicians are restoring the systems as fast as they can.

The assaults on the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia power plants have already had implications for the environment. The radioactive dust raised by the wheels and trucks of the Russian combat vehicles in the Chernobyl zone has raised the background radiation levels to a hundredfold excess of the normal threshold. Just imagine what chaotic attacks, with Russians shooting, firing missiles, and bombing other parts of Ukrainian territory might lead to. In Ukraine, we have a saying, “мавпа з гранатою,” which means, “Like a monkey with a grenade." Russia is playing the monkey to all of Europe.

Russia continues to assert that its forces are in Ukraine for reasons of safety and security. The takeover of Chernobyl disturbed large amounts of radioactive soil, propelling it into the air. The attack on Zaporizhzhia resulted in a fire on the site of an active nuclear plant. This is not what safety looks like. To pretend that these actions are anything but a dangerous disregard for life is an insult to all sane, rational people. We are all very lucky that none of Zaporizhzhia’s six reactors were hit by the tank shell that started that fire.

Russia, the U.S. and the UK committed 20 years ago to ensure Ukraine’s peaceful sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons program. This agreement was built on the idea that Ukraine without nuclear weapons would never have cause to be the target of any attack. This assurance was guaranteed by the signers of the memorandum.

But Russia’s violent attacks have proven that a nuclear threat still exists in Ukraine. It is not a threat of Ukraine’s making, but one engineered by Russia’s own reckless assault on our civilian nuclear facilities. The consequences of this diabolical action go well beyond a potential environmental catastrophe for Ukraine; our neighbors, including Russia itself, and even countries outside of Europe could all be affected by nuclear fallout carried on high-atmosphere winds across continent and over oceans.

One way to mitigate this threat and to realize security assurances to Ukraine is to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The hesitance of the EU and U.S.  to implement a no-fly zone is understandable. But at the same time, it is critically important to develop options and generate models for other types of no-fly zones beyond the proposals being discussed today. Such alternative options could be the key to helping prevent a Ukrainian tragedy not only in terms of nuclear security, but also in averting a similar tragedy to what the world witnessed in Aleppo.

To do this, Ukraine needs more military support. We have gratefully received strong military support from our allies, but even this bounty is not enough to defend our country. Stinger missiles can shoot down small, low-flying aircraft from a fairly short distance, but are useless against ballistic missiles and high-altitude bombers. We need weapons that can shoot down planes at considerable distances and altitudes, systems to detect and shoot down cruise missiles, and planes to protect our airspace. Early Russian attacks targeted our airports to deplete our air defense capabilities and frustrate our ability to get planes in the air. But we still stand. But if we want to avert a second Chernobyl or another Aleppo, we need to strengthen our air defenses.

We learned in 1939 that making concessions to tyrants is no plan for peace. Putin is a bully. Like all bullies, he will take as much as he can get while treating all harm — including environmental harm — as merely incidental. Like all bullies, he will stop only when he meets strong resistance. Putin and the Russia propaganda machine frame all attempts to stymie Russian aggression as not only a provocation, but a provocation that could trigger a nuclear response. Such veiled threats of nuclear attacks are a form of prior restraint meant to constrain Ukraine’s allies from even suggesting that the Russian invasion is improper. But we must not accept this starkly irrational framework. Nuclear weapons are weapons of deterrence, not tools to chill diplomatic criticism.

American analysts say that they expect the Russian attacks to become increasingly more brutal. Any increased risks to civilian and military targets commensurately increases risks to nuclear sites as well. And any compromised nuclear facility in Ukraine inherently becomes an international problem, not just a local one. Like Putin, radioactive fallout does not respect borders.

Just ten days ago, my life changed dramatically. I used to be a successful civil leader and entrepreneur with an innovative business. Now I sleep on the floor of an abandoned building with my gun in hand. My daughter knows exactly how the air raid siren sounds. But we are still Ukrainians. We are still Europeans. We still count on our allies. So to our allies, I say: close the Ukrainian sky. Provide us with enough weapons. We will do the rest.

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Nataliya Gumenyuk
Founding Director of the Public Interest Journalism Lab
DHSF class of 2018

As a journalist who covers conflict, today I am 100% consumed by the current situation in Ukraine. It is my job to explain what’s going on to a global audience, as well as to the Ukrainian one. Yet I and other Ukrainian professionals feel a bit trapped. The situation is so uncertain, we cannot afford to cancel all other plans; we are always busy with so many things happening, we can neither cancel nor fully engage. I am saddened that so much of our strength and energy is wasted on this situation. And on top of everything we are thinking about our families and considering various scenarios. As for myself – I am on duty.

Russia’s demands are not about Ukraine, they are about changing the international security architecture, canceling the ‘open door’ policy by NATO, which undermines the whole idea of the alliance. If Russia is allowed to invade further (and by the way Russia has already occupied parts of Ukrainian territories since 2014) – we are essentially agreeing that it’s acceptable to conquer other states by force.

The key takeaways for me are that we really should be discussing the current international relations system and to what extent it is able to protect countries outside of these alliances, and young democracies when they are threatened and bullied. This is a discussion not only about Eastern Europe.

Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian author and journalist specializing in foreign affairs and conflict reporting. Gumenyuk is the author of the book “The Lost Island: Tales From Occupied Crimea” (2020), based on six years of reporting from the annexed peninsula. You can read some of her recent work here: 

• Full-scale war in Ukraine is not inevitable. We journalists must stop suggesting the contrary. (Vox Europe)
• Ukrainians can't afford to be afraid (The Washington Post)
• What makes Putin fear Ukraine? (The New Yorker)
   

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Oleksiy Honcharuk
Former Prime Minister of Ukraine
2021 Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at CDDRL and the Freeman Spogli Institute

Democracy is one of the primary threats for Putin. Russia invaded Ukraine because of our choice to be a free, democratic country. That’s why the war between Ukraine and Russia is not a regional conflict – it is an important part of a larger war for democracy. 

Global democracy has been in a recession for at least the last 15 years due to a lack of democratic leadership around the world. It looks like the West has forgotten about the real value of democracy and has taken it for granted. This was a mistake and Ukraine is already paying a big price for it. Ukraine is now a beacon of democracy for millions of people in Eastern Europe and Asia, and we cannot lose this battle. 

I want Ukraine to be a successful, free country but Putin is trying to destroy it. I'm not scared and I am ready to fight for democracy.

More from Oleksiy Honcharuk:

• Ukraine vs Russia: War for Democracy (2021 Liautad Lecture)
   

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Oleksandra Matviichuk
Head of the Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine)
UELP 2017-18

Russia under Putin has finally turned back into an empire. Unfortunately, the empire cannot remain stable. Putin thinks in terms of the Soviet Union. But now Russia does not have enough resources to play a full game, so the Kremlin is betting on war.

This is not about the war between Russia and Ukraine – it is about the war between authoritarianism and democracy. Thus, Ukraine acts in an unexpected role as an outpost that protects the values of the free world. Putin does not fear NATO, but the values of freedom in the post-Soviet space because it threatens his authoritarian regime.

We are preparing for a new armed attack by Russia. Recently, the President of Ukraine gave a press conference to foreign media, which raised many questions. However, there is something that the Kremlin cannot understand and that is underestimated in the West: People in America and the EU have lived for years with efficient and stable state institutions. We have never had such a luxury in Ukraine, so we are not used to relying on the government at critical moments.

I have been working in the field of human rights for more than twenty years, the last eight of which were focused on the war with Russia, so I have no illusions. Human rights defenders, journalists, and civil society activists will be the first targets of Russia's armed aggression. We have seen this before during the seizure of Crimea and Donbas when in order to gain rapid control of the region a non-violent minority was physically destroyed or driven out for their resistance. I have talked to my fellow human rights defenders, and I can say the following: We will stay in Ukraine and protect human rights as much as we can.

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Nataliya Mykolska
Strategic transformations expert, Member of the Board Ukrhydroenergo JSC
UELP 2018-19

The Russian aggression against Ukraine and potential military invasion is not only about Ukraine. It is about democracy prevailing in the former CIS region and Ukraine being a success story. A truly independent and successful Ukraine is a major threat to Putin’s autocratic regime in Russia and his short and long-term prospects in the region. 

We, Ukrainians, are ready to fight for our values, our freedom, our dignity, our country, our land, and the future of our children. We have done so in 2014 and have continued to do so for eight years. There is no other way for us to move forward.

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Ivan Prymachenko
Founder, Prometheus
UELP 2018-19

In 1946 George Kennan famously wrote the following about the Soviet state: "impervious to the logic of reason it is highly sensitive to the logic of force. For this reason, it can easily withdraw – and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point."

In 2022, this description is still fitting for the self-declared successor of the USSR – Putin's Russia. The best way to provoke Putin now is to show weakness. The best way to achieve peace is to demonstrate strength by preparing a devastating sanctions package against Russia and delivering modern weapons to Ukraine.

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Artem Romaniukov
Co-founder at SaveDnipro / SaveEcoBot, Co-founder at Civil Control Platform
UELP 2019-20

There are two competing points of view here in Ukraine on what is going on. The first is that Ukraine is a bargaining chip between Russia and "the West.” This means there will be no exacerbation of war, just bluffing.  

Second is that Putin for some reason felt that this was the right time to push for his agenda and started to raise the stakes, but "the West" appeared to be more united than ever before, providing Ukraine with lethal weapons and making strong claims. This means he may find himself in a stalemate with no choice except to invade Ukraine and become a pariah in the international community. 

It looks like president Zelensky believes in the first scenario. But the relevant emptiness on Kyiv streets in recent days shows that Ukrainians do not always share the government's view.

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Igor Rozkladaj
Deputy Director at the Center for Democracy and Rule of Law
DHSF class of 2018

Democracy is the best thing that we have in the modern world. But democracy needs to be trained – much like muscles on your body – or else it will become weak.

In a time of economic stress, pandemic, and uncertainty people seek simple explanations and decisions– that is the Achilles' heel of democracy. And in combination with disinformation and easy money, autocratic regimes can take hold. That's how the Soviet Union and modern Russia manipulated the Western world and did it with great success.

Russia always was and still is an authoritarian country. Nowadays under the autocratic Putin regime, we see increased militarization and pressure on independent people to stop their activities or face being arrested. 

Ukrainians, whose territories have been occupied by Russia, whose language and culture was under imperial pressure, whose identity is now denied now by Russia’s leadership, whose millions of people were killed in famines and wars know the real face of this country. The reforms we have made in Ukraine since 2014 are vitally important, from anti-corruption to decommunization. This conflict is not only about Ukraine, but about stopping Putin’s vision of  “Russkyi mir” from spreading throughout the region. 

We Ukrainians have made three attempts to wrench ourselves away from Russian influence: in 1991, 2004, and 2013-14. We have been at war with "unidentified little green men" for the last 8 years. We lose our best people to protect our country from Putin’s ambitions, and yet still fight. The question is what will prevail: corruption and kleptocracy from Putin or the democratic values that millions of Ukrainians have sacrificed for.

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Olexandr Starodubtsev
Deputy Head at the National Agency for Corruption Prevention
UELP 2017-18

The war that Russia started in 2014 is hybrid in nature. Misinformation and cyber-attacks by Russia have become commonplace in Ukraine since then. Of course, Ukrainians feel worried today about the latest news, but we see the support of international partners, including supplies of weapons. We hope that these weapons will not have to be used and that the latest signals from Russia are just another attempt to intimidate Ukraine and the global community.

For our part, we at the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) are preparing for a new Russian cyber-attack. The NACP maintains several strategic portals, such as a register of e-declarations of all public officials, and has access to 17 other government databases. It is important for us that these data do not fall into the hands of the enemy. The last big cyber-attack did not affect us significantly because of the high level of training of our IT specialists. Therefore, we are confident that we will be able to resist future attacks.

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While the West is trying to negotiate a de-escalation of Russia’s buildup of forces on the borders of Ukraine, Putin renegotiates the world order. It’s not only Ukraine’s NATO integration he is concerned with. Putin wants informal veto power in NATO and the EU as well as a quiet funeral ceremony for the rule-based international order. The West needs two things to counteract such a scenario. First, unity and readiness to defend its redlines, which can be costly.  Second,  a long-term comprehensive strategy to withstand Putin. Because even if we succeed in stopping his invasion now, make no mistake, it will not be his last move.

More from Svitlana Zalishchuk:

• Digital Disinformation Forum: Francis Fukuyama interview with Svitlana Zalischuk