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Can Bankova Muster Political Will to Make Institutional Reforms During War?

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members.

Jun 15 • 1:15 PM EDT • Politics • warontherocks.com

Top Ukrainian interceptor drone maker learned faster not always better

Wild Hornets, which is behind the popular Sting interceptor drone, scaled back the speed in favor of loitering time.

Jun 13 • 7:14 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

In Retrospect: Poland, Russia, Europe

In April I spent a few days with Zryw, a Polish non-profit organization that recruits young people to enter politics and public life. Their aim is to build a new generation of civic leaders in Poland. I’ve followed their evolution from the beginning; my son is one of the founders. (“Zryw” means “impulse” or “burst of speed” in Polish). Julie Chmielewska, one of Zryw’s leaders, interviewed me at the event. Here is the conversation, lightly edited for grammar and context: Julia Chmielewska: Assuming that culture shapes institutions, could we conclude that some cultures are more prone to authoritarianism? Anne Applebaum: I don’t think so. Every culture, every nation, and every country has the potential for change. When we look at history, we can see that nations do change. Poland has changed, for example, from the 1980s to today. There’s a completely different mentality here than the one I encountered when I first visited, in 1988. The current generation sees the world through a different frame. So no, I don’t believe that certain nations are doomed to authoritarianism, or to anything. Of course, there are political and cultural traditions, but they can always be challenged. JC: So do you think there’s something intrinsic in human nature that pushes people to democracy, freedom? AA: I think there is something in human nature, a deep instinct, that pushes people towards freedom, yes. People who live in authoritarian countries – and I’ve heard this from them over and over again – sooner or later find themselves angered by a feeling of helplessness. They can see the unfairness of crooked courts, irrational political decisions. They naturally dislike the fact that somebody has all the power while they have none. In those circumstances, people who have no political background at all sometimes are politicized just by that frustration. I’m thinking of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, for example, who was a Belarusian housewife, until the circumstances of her husband’s arrest forced her to become a politician. I met a woman who is a Uyghur from China, and who had come to live in Turkey. After several of her family members were arrested, she too was propelled into a political role. These kinds of experiences make people interested in democracy or political reform, even if they thought they didn’t care. I also think that the opposite is true: some people instinctively prefer homogeneity, order, hierarchy. They don’t like the confrontation of opinions or the noise of debate, and they lean towards a single leader or a unified regime. I think that most of modern history is shaped by the clash between those two different sides of human nature. JC: Which force do you find more powerful today? AA: I think they both have a lot of power and there’s no way of predicting who wins. Even in countries that seem very shut off or stuck in an authoritarian system can change. We’ve seen that happen. And vice versa, I think democracies can also begin to fail and slide into authoritarianism. So it’s very important not to be complacent in either direction. JC: I want to go into your history and your experiences. You’ve lived in Russia during a time of incredible change in the late 80s, and then you came back to do research in post-Soviet Russia. AA: I was a student in Russia just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I then traveled and worked there extensively in the 1990s, and I met people who really were full of hope. They hoped that Russia could become a democracy, or at least a place that guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of the press. These weren’t ideas that came from Washington. Although now the narrative in the Kremlin is different, I met many people who were working towards exactly that kind of transformation. A friend of mine ran a series of seminars – once a year, and then later several times a year, in cities all over Russia – designed to get people to discuss politics in new ways. She invited young politicians and journalists, as well as foreigners. I went to many of them, in Moscow as well as Volgograd and Novosibirsk. Over two decades, hundreds of people came to these seminars, and all of them wanted Russia to be different. I remain convinced that many Russians still want Russia to be different. It’s just that the old system, in the form of Putin, a representative of that system, returned. The KGB reimposed their power. And this wasn’t because of something to do with culture, this was to do with money and politics, and who was in charge. JC: You’ve partially answered my question... I wanted to ask whether that excitement of the 1990s was an exception from the Russian historical norm which has been rather authoritarian? AA: Of course, if you look at the history of Russia since the 18th century, there have always been liberal groups, reformers and revolutionaries. There were the Decembrists, in the early 19th century, and the rural populists later on, who tried to organize the peasantry. A significant group of liberal Russians appeared at the turn of the 20th century, people like the father of the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was a Russian politician before the revolution. These groups were small in number, but sometimes had a broader significance. The Russian dissident movement in the 1950s and 1960s actually invented the modern human rights movement. It was their idea to hold the leaders of the Soviet Union accountable for the language they used, to remind them of the treaties they had signed and the promised they had made. They created the Helsinki group, for example, that held Soviet leadership to the language of the Helsinki Treaty, which formally ended the Second World War and which contained guarantees of human rights, at least on paper. That idea spread to Eastern Europe, and similar tactics were used here in Poland. (Benjamin Nathans recently wrote a great book about the Soviet dissidents, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause) JC: But seemingly, even if they do ever get power, they could never hold on to it. AA: We don’t know, because they have never really had power. But in any case, we also don’t know what will happen in the future. There is no reason to assume that Russia will forever be condemned to totalitarianism. Even during the first fifteen years of Putin’s regime there was some form of democratic politics. Only when the full-scale war began did he bring everything to an end: he shut down all remaining independent organizations and killed his most important opponent, Alexi Navalny. But does that mean he is popular, that he enjoys legitimacy? Even now, we don’t really know what Russians think about him, or about the war. There is no way of doing real polling in Russia because nobody will answer an independent pollster over the phone. JC: Do you think that the flock of young people, especially young men, who fled Russia after the start of the war represent a continuation of liberal movements that refuse to partake in the authoritarian state, or do you think they are moving for the sake of self-preservation – “I don’t want to go to the army, so I leave”? AA: I’m sure it’s both. I actually know many people who left Russia for political reasons either in the very last years before the war, or else just after the war began. JC: And do you see a change in the young generation versus the old one that have fled? AA: It’s hard for me to say because the people who I know were mostly already politicized. I do know some younger people who left, but most of them were already either active in the opposition, or working as journalists. Many of them very self-consciously think of themselves as maintaining Russian culture abroad, just as in the 20th century the Soviet dissidents or the anti-communist White Russians once thought of themselves as people who maintained the true Russian culture, outside of Bolshevik Russia. JC: Let’s move on to Poland. One of your first experiences with Poland was reporting on Margaret Thatcher’s first state visit, in the autumn of 1988. You followed her around the farmers’ market. AA: She was making a symbolic gesture. She wanted to welcome free markets, but the only one she could really visit was the farmers’ market at Hala Mirowska. JC: And I want to talk about this area because today you can look out of any window in that district, Mirów, and see rows and rows of skyscrapers. How does it feel to see a country built from the ground in such a short time, both politically and economically? AA: You know, when you’re living in a period of dramatic change, it’s always hard to know whether the change is positive or negative. The transformation in Poland created winners and losers, as well as new classes of people, new political movements of different kinds. At the time, it sometimes just felt like turbulence. Now, we can look back at the 1990s and early 2000s in Poland and see in retrospect that the country was headed in towards prosperity and European integration. In around 2009 or 2010, I remember speaking to a woman who worked cleaning government offices, and who asked me if her daughter should study in Amsterdam or in London. This seemed to me to be a real transformation, and it happened very fast: within a few years, Poles stopped feeling like second-class Europeans, and a generation of younger Poles appeared who had no qualms about crossing borders. JC: We again live in turbulent times. Do you think we’re heading towards positive outcomes? AA: I can’t make predictions, because everything that happens tomorrow depends on what people do today. Also, history doesn’t have a trajectory. It doesn’t move in a particular direction. You only think it does afterwards. As I said, you can look afterwards at Poland in the 1990s and you could say this was a period of great progress. But not everybody at the time saw that. Sometimes people are very wrong about a given country’s trajectory. I remember people writing about Ukraine in the 1990s, about how dangerous it was that Ukraine was independent, that this was going to be an anti-semitic state, that Ukrainian nationalism was going to come back... and although you can say many bad things about Ukraine, the country made many bad choices, actually it became a pretty tolerant state which now has a Jewish president and until recently a Muslim defense minister. JC: In the 1990s Poland’s and Ukraine’s GDP were roughly similar. Ukraine was even a bit richer. So the starting point was similar for both of these countries, but they’ve turned out very, very differently. Even if we stop in 2014. Why do you think Ukraine “chose East”? Was it external influence? AA: No, I think Ukraine was in a different position. First of all, central and eastern Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union since the 1920s, and had therefore experienced a longer period of occupation, repression, Sovietization and even Russification. Ukraine did not have, as Poland did, an alternative elite: a large cadre of economists and politicians, who already had some experience in opposition politics and in independent thinking. In Poland, the transformative finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, had already thought about how an economy might be decentralized before he took office. We can argue about how successful he was, but at least he was prepared to try something new. In Ukraine, people weren’t prepared. For one, there hadn’t been much space even for an illegal opposition in the previous couple of decades. Ukraine was also in many ways still emerging from colonial occupation. For the previous couple of centuries, many of the most capable Ukrainians had moved to Russia, and the first generation of leaders in independent Ukraine tended to be former Soviet apparatchiks. They didn’t immediately seek to become closer to western Europe. Instead, they looked for some kind of economic and political “third way” and an accomodation with Russia. Ukraine became stuck in this position, half-in, half-out and became pretty profoundly corrupt. JC: The Polish alternative elite had a vision of where they wanted the country to go. I think the general perception now is that this vision ends with the next election, right? Is this a natural process of gaining power? AA: Their vision, and it was shared by the time by politicians who now call themselves both left and right, was that Poland should join the EU and NATO, as fast as possible. My husband (Radek Sikorski) was in the very first government that said it wanted to join NATO. At the time this was taken very badly in Washington: the demand for NATO membership absolutely came from Poland, not from the US. But even then, in the early 1990s, many Poles already understood that the Russian sphere of influence would grow once again, that it was important to become part of the transatlantic alliance and an integrated Europe as fast as possible: NATO, the EU, the Council of Europe, all of the trading and security alliances. That consensus lasted through several different governments and over many years, even governments containing former communists. For twenty years, right, left and center disagreed about many things, but they all agreed on the direction that the country should go. In retrospect, that consensus created the basis for prosperity in Poland. JC: And regarding the Polish-Ukrainian relations. We know that antagonisms, e.g. the myth of Wołyń [a massacre of Poles that took place in what is now Western Ukraine, in 1943] are increasingly used in Polish political discourse today. In Ukraine, nationalist historians make heroes out of UPA, the Ukrainian revolutionary army, which is held responsible for this tragedy. Where do you see a start for burying the hatchet? Is the reconciliation of our nations possible? AA: So here’s a strange thing: For more than a decade after they both gained independence, Poland and Ukraine participated in a number of projects that were designed to solve exactly these kinds of Polish-Ukrainian differences. Books were published that were jointly written by Polish and Ukrainian historians, monuments were built. These projects were successful: If you’d asked me this question in 2010, I would have said that there are no real historical issues between Poland and Ukraine, that the two countries had mostly reconciled. For a number of reasons, this began to shift. In Poland, children and grandchildren of victims of the Wołyń massacre felt their tragedy hadn’t been fully recognized. In Ukraine, nationalist groups wanted the UPA partisans who had fought against the Soviet Union recognized for their heroism, despite the fact that some in this broad and not well-defined group were also linked to Wołyń. In both eastern Poland and western Ukraine, the memory of the ethnic cleansing that took place there in the late 1940s - Poles were moved West, Ukrainians East - to accomodate new borders has left feelings of displacement and bitterness. The wave of Ukrainian immigration, which started before the war, may have provoked some of this. But don’t underestimate the role played by Russia, which has always wanted to create discord between Poland and Ukraine, and pumps out propaganda to that effect in both countries. Vandalism on both sides of the border, damage done to cemeteries and monuments, is sometimes carried out by provacateurs working for Russia, just to create bad feelings. The Polish-Ukrainian conflict also hides a different reality: although there are real grievances and bad memories, the truth is that the biggest tragedies both nations experienced in the twentieth century were inflicted by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. That should unite these two countries, not divide them. JC: This week (19.04.2026 – Ed.) in Hungary we saw that using historical narratives to create grievance has no longer worked. Are you optimistic about the direction after Orban’s loss? AA: The Hungarian election was really important because it shows that people can actually resist powerful, dominant propaganda. The ruling party Fidesz controlled all of the TV, 90% of the newspapers, the constitutional court, the bureaucracy... and yet people had the nerve to vote against it and resist it. It’s also an important election because Hungary created a huge network of well-funded think tanks and foundations that were funding other far right groups and projects. So that loss is going to have a knock-on effect in other places too, maybe even in Poland. JC: What you’ve said about resisting propaganda reminds me of one of the interviews you did about talking to Russians in the post-Soviet era who claimed that people knew that the system was lying. Why do people choose to believe in these regimes anyway? AA: Because it’s useful. Stephen Kotkin, an American historian, once described how people would learn how to “speak Bolshevik”: It was just a language that you needed to use in order to get by in society. If you didn’t talk the way the regime wanted you to talk, then you might have problems, or lose your job, or your kids would not get into university. It was a way of getting along. Communist Poland was similar, at least in the early years. When I was writing a book about the Sovietization of Eastern Europe after World War II, I met a lot of people who wanted to talk a lot about the war, when many of them had done really heroic things. But almost nobody wanted to talk about the decade afterwards, between 1945 and 1956. This was when you had the short period of terror, violence and Polish Stalinism. To stay safe, people felt the need to just go along with what others were saying, or stay out of politics, or use communist jargon without necessarily believing it. I don’t judge them for it, and I wouldn’t describe all of those people as collaborators. It’s easy to feel moral certainty in retrospect, because we know that communism ended. But if you were living in 1949, it might not have been clear to you that communism was going to end. In very repressive societies, maybe about 10% of people who are really evil – collaborators, torturers. Maybe 10% of people are really brave and who find ways to resist. And then around 80% of people have kids, they have parents, they have to have jobs and they’ve had to get through it somehow. Strange though it may sound, I’ve found that the work I did on that book is now very useful in explaining some of what’s going on in the United States today. There are plenty of members of the Republican Party in Congress who know perfectly well that Donald Trump says many things that aren’t true. But they avoid criticizing him because it’s inconvenient, because they would get in trouble, because someone would attack them on the internet. So actually you don’t even need mass terror to get people to conform. JC: Is Gen Z reinventing agency? AA: We’ll see. In any generation you can find groups of people who want agency. If you live in a society that’s unfair, for example where a tiny number of people have captured most of the wealth, then at a certain point people rebel. This is always easier for younger people, who have you have less to lose. The question now is how the internet will affect the relationships between citizens and the state, and how it will change organizations. The “Twitter revolutions” people spoke about as early as 2008-9, mass protests organized online, have often proved to be very superficial. Although you can easily join something just by clicking, the work of creating a real movement requires physical participation. Successful mass movements of the past, for example the Civil Rights movement in the United States, were built by people who had spent many years together. They had participated in non-violent workshops together. They practiced and prepared. Just using the you can get everybody to show up at a certain moment, but then when the protest is broken up, nothing happens. It’s also true that the repressive regimes have more recently learned how to use the internet to undermine leaders and movements. Most of all, they now understand how to make people cynical. The form of propaganda that most modern authoritarians use - and I think the Russians really pioneered this - deploys sneering cynicism. Instead of praising the rulers, the regime propagandists mock the opposition movement leadership for being supposedly corrupt or sexually degenerate, with the goal of undermining any kind of idealism. JC: MAGA grew on the internet? AA: MAGA is a real grassroots movement. They had symbols, red hats, they showed up at rallies. But you’re right that the cynicism, the sarcasm and the distrust that the movement embodies came originally from the internet, and this is different. Fifty years ago, most European political parties had a social base in real organizations, in trade unions for Social Democrats, in church groups for Christian Democrats. As people stopped going to church and as the trade unions became smaller, the social base of these parties disappeared. Now people who wouldn’t have known one another in the past meet on the internet and create new movements, many of which don’t last. JC: Is history ending? Going in stale circles? AA: History never ends. In truth, human beings want contradictory things at the same time: order and freedom, stability and change. These things are never resolved, and when a society swings too far in one direction, people always push it the other way. But each time that happens, the result is different. Certainly it is true that we are now in a period when old philosophers and ideas from the 1930s are undergoing a revival. Carl Schmitt, who was a philosopher who was very influential on the Nazis, is back as an influence on both the far left and the far right, once again inspiring people to think that all politics has to be existential, that all politics is about defining and defeating enemies. In the US, some are also bringing back dominionism, the idea that we need a Christian and not a secular state. It’s also true that we are living through a more fundamental shift. The old left-right divide, which was mostly about the size of the state, is much less important now. Instead, we are arguing about more fundamental things: what are our rights, what protects our freedom. Or how much power do we want to give small elites, versus how much power to give ordinary people. In America a small group of very wealthy people now control information, because they control the social media platforms and AI, which means they determine what people will read and learn. Finding a way to preserve preserve zones of autonomy and independent thinking, this is going to be the main task for the next generation. JC: What is the one book that a person interested in Central Europe should read? AA: You could read my book “Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe” which tells the story of how the Soviet Union imposed its culture on the region. Or read Tim Snyder’s history of the region, “The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999.” And everyone should read “The Captive Mind” by Czesław Miłosz, which describes exactly the phenomenon we were talking about: why do people collaborate? I joined Scott Galloway and the brilliant Fiona Hill in a discussion about the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the future of global power, and what these conflicts reveal about America's role in the world. Scott told us that this was the 400th edition of his podcast, which is quite a number: My friend Francesco Chiamulera runs a brilliant series of literary events, Una Colline di Libri, A Hill of Books, in the Prosecco Hills, a region of vineyards and elegant hill towns in the Veneto, north of Venice. We did an event in Vittorio Veneto and also drove and biked around the countryside. Buy Autocracy Inc Buy Iron Curtain Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

Jun 13 • 4:15 AM EDT • Politics • anneapplebaum.substack.com

A blind Ukrainian veteran turns pottery into a business and mentors others

VINNYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — The two burly men stare straight ahead, hands intertwined on a pottery wheel, fingers buried in the clay. They sense each other’s presence through touch alone.

Jun 12 • 1:18 AM EDT • Business • wral.com

A blind Ukrainian veteran turns pottery into a business and mentors others

One is a veteran who lost his sight in combat and now teaches other blind veterans. The instructor, Ivan Shostak, 37, said he has made more than 1,000 such pieces but has never seen a single one. Th...

Jun 12 • 1:14 AM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

EXCLUSIVE: EU weighs excluding military-age Ukrainian men from extended protection scheme

Some EU capitals argue the framework should be revised to support Ukraine’s war effort, with any limits applying only to future applicants

Jun 1 • 12:00 AM EDT • Politics • euractiv.com

Russia is sending swarms of cheap drones after single soldiers

Russia has gone from not wanting to use drones against a single Ukrainian to now using "up to 15 drones to kill a single soldier," an official said.

May 29 • 6:22 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Russia puts electronic warfare on drones fighting Ukrainian interceptors

The modified Shaheds comes as Ukrainian interceptor drones are logging a growing number of drone kills.

May 28 • 7:34 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

How an obscure EV tax cost Ukraine thousands of battle bots this year

Ukrainian lawmakers are racing to undo a tax measure that came into effect in January, saying that it's stifled supply of the drones for the military.

May 27 • 12:35 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Ukrainians say Italian tank gun hit house 120 football fields away

The gunner of the Italian B1 Centauro said the tank gun, fired like artillery, had struck the building nearly seven miles away.

May 25 • 1:08 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

From Kharkiv to the UK’s health service: Ukrainian doctor rebuilds her life – and helps others do the same

On 23 February 2022, in her home city of Kharkiv, Dr Inna Soldatenko finished work, collected her daughter from school, cooked dinner and prepared a lecture for her students. The next morning, she awoke to explosions.

May 23 • 12:00 PM EDT • Health • news.un.org

Loma looks to live dangerously in return to the ring

Former Ukrainian pound-for-pound king Vasiliy Lomachenko hasn't officially announced his return to the ring, but the rumors about who will be his comeback fight opponent are already swirling. Gervonta "Tank" Davis was the first name mentioned. That makes sense, since fans of both fighters have ...

May 20 • 8:03 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Russia putting anti-jam antennas on foam decoys for Shaheds: Ukraine

Ukrainians have been finding 12-element Kometa antennas, which provide stronger jamming resistance, on their cheap Gerberas, a top analyst said.

May 19 • 12:27 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Serhii Huliienko, Ph.D. on Ukrainian Science, Membrane Research, and Wartime Academic Life

How does Dr. Serhii Huliienko explain Ukrainian scientific culture, membrane research, and the challenges facing scientists during wartime?

May 3 • 8:32 AM EDT • Science • vocal.media

This Ukrainian drone company fears missing Iran war moment

Ukraine's battle-proven drone interceptors are seeing new interest. One maker worries that without being able to export, it will miss the window.

Apr 18 • 6:00 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Making games in a war zone: Metro 2039’s Ukrainian developers speak out

Upcoming sequel wants to capture a "uniquely Ukrainian perspective" on the post-apocalypse.

Apr 16 • 1:50 PM EDT • Technology • arstechnica.com

"War is our reality": 4A reveal Metro 2039, a horror FPS inspired by Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Metro 2029 returns the FPS series to the tunnels of Moscow, but this time it's "told from a distinctly Ukrainian perspective."

Apr 16 • 1:15 PM EDT • Technology • rockpapershotgun.com

A first look at Metro 2039 shows how its Ukrainian developer turned the darkness up to 11

Metro 2039 is scheduled to arrive this winter for Xbox, PlayStation 5 and PC.

Apr 16 • 1:15 PM EDT • Technology • engadget.com

Elina Svitolina climbs into Serena Williams’ ranking territory

Elina Svitolina hits ranking milestone matched only by Serena WilliamsSince returning to the WTA Tour following her pregnancy in 2023, Elina Svitolina has experienced a notable resurgence in her career. The Ukrainian has picked up three WTA titles since then, the most recent being the ASB Classic at the beginning of the 2026 season.

Apr 6 • 8:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Ukraine beats Russia at world’s top sports court

The chess ruling in Kyiv’s favor sends signal that “aggression cannot be normalized through sporting institutions,” top Ukrainian official tells POLITICO.

Apr 5 • 10:00 PM EDT • Sports • politico.eu

Yagody: transforming Ukrainian tradition with song

Ukrainian vocal group Yagody uses their unique blend of traditional folk and modern electronica to construct an emotionally resonant and powerful sonic landscape. The band will perform at CSPS Hall Thursday, April 2.

Mar 30 • 11:45 AM EDT • Entertainment • thegazette.com

Dovbyk’s season might not be over after all

A cursed season for Artem Dovbyk. The Ukrainian striker required surgery in Finland at the end of January for a myotendinous tear in his left thigh, and his return remains a huge unknown. However, con...

Mar 27 • 2:45 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Russians caught stealing personal data from Ukrainians with new advanced iPhone hacking tools

A suspected group of Russian government hackers was caught targeting Ukrainians with new iPhone hacking tools designed for espionage and potentially to steal crypto.

Mar 18 • 10:00 AM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com

Ukrainian drone went on strike mission, returned impaled by a trident

Soldiers were surprised when the drone returned from a bombing mission, the unit commander told Business Insider.

Mar 2 • 7:07 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Leading Expert on Ukrainian Politics Discusses Russo-Ukrainian War and Prospects for Peace

Leading Expert on Ukrainian Politics Discusses Russo-Ukrainian War and Prospects for Peace

Mar 2 • 7:00 AM EST • Politics • maxwell.syr.edu

Ukraine says homegrown missiles 800+ miles to hit Russian factory

The launch from last week came amid one of Ukraine's largest long-range attacks into Russia, with Moscow saying it shot down 77 Ukrainian drones.

Feb 26 • 12:49 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Ukrainian drone pilot finds Russian arsenal, filled with horses, cars

Cosmos, a fiber-optic drone pilot, told Business Insider he was hunting for hidden Russian storages when he found the Ladas and two horses.

Feb 17 • 12:01 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

IOC moves closer to reinstating Russia by LA28, but backlash may put its return on ice

The support for Ukrainian athletes at the Milan-Cortina Games suggests there may be challenges with reinstating Russia and Belarus for the LA28 Olympics.

Feb 16 • 2:58 AM EST • Sports • latimes.com

Ukrainian skeleton slider Vladyslav Heraskevych has appeal dismissed over Olympics disqualification

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has dismissed Ukrainian skeleton slider Vladyslav Heraskevych’s appeal to be reinstated into the Olympic Games after he was disqualified from competition for breaking International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules over athlete expression.

Feb 13 • 11:55 AM EST • Sports • cnn.com

Ukrainian racer loses DQ appeal over helmet

Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych's appeal of his disqualification from the Milan Cortina Olympics has been denied by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Feb 13 • 11:42 AM EST • Sports • espn.com

Ukrainian athlete Heraskevych's appeal for reinstatement dismissed by sports court

The Court of Arbitration for Sport on Friday dismissed an appeal by Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych to be reinstated in the Milano Cortina Olympics after he was disqualified over his “helmet of remembrance".

Feb 13 • 11:40 AM EST • Sports • reuters.com

Ukrainian: 'Train has left' as helmet appeal heard

The Court of Arbitration for Sport heard the appeal of Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych surrounding his disqualification from the Milan Cortina Games, though the slider knows he won't be competing even if he wins his case.

Feb 13 • 7:05 AM EST • Sports • espn.com

Winter Olympics Day 7: ‘Quad God’ goes for gold in men’s free skate, Ukrainian appeals Games DQ

Feb 13 • 4:10 AM EST • Sports • cnn.com

Politics Seep Into Olympics After Ukrainian Banned Over a Helmet

Lying face-down on a flat sled, ready to lunge head-first down an ice track, skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych wore a helmet during his training sessions for the Winter Olympics featuring images of fellow Ukrainians who had died during Russia’s invasion of his country.

Feb 12 • 11:53 AM EST • Politics • bloomberg.com

Ukrainian drones hit nearly 1,100 miles deep in Russia: security source

A security source told Business Insider that the drones struck a refinery in Russia's Komi Republic on Thursday.

Feb 12 • 10:36 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Winter Olympics Day 6: Ukrainian slider disqualified from Games over helmet, Chloe Kim goes for halfpipe three-peat

Feb 12 • 4:49 AM EST • Sports • cnn.com

Skeleton-Ukraine's Heraskevych disqualified over helmet controversy

Ukraine's skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified from the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on Thursday over the use of a helmet depicting Ukrainian athletes killed in the conflict with Russia since Moscow's invasion in 2022, he said.

Feb 12 • 3:14 AM EST • Sports • reuters.com

Ukrainian skeleton slider claims IOC has banned helmet showing athletes killed in war

Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych says the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has banned him from wearing his helmet featuring images of athletes killed during the war in Ukraine.

Feb 10 • 6:10 AM EST • Sports • cnn.com

Coco Gauff smashes racket in frustration after 59-minute collapse in Australian Open quarterfinal

Coco Gauff’s hopes of winning this year’s Australian Open came crashing down in just 59 minutes on Tuesday, as she was beaten in straight sets in the quarterfinals by Ukrainian star Elina Svitolina.

Jan 27 • 6:54 AM EST • Sports • cnn.com

Zelenskyy says UAE round of Ukraine-US-Russia talks ‘constructive’

The Ukrainian president said more talks could take place next week.

Jan 24 • 9:42 AM EST • Politics • tvpworld.com

Ukrainian tennis player asks sporting world to ‘protect children and women’ at Australian Open

Oleksandra Oliynykova used her news conference after defeat to Madison Keys to speak about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Jan 20 • 5:31 AM EST • Sports • nytimes.com

Former Ukrainian PM accused of bribing politicians with US dollars to weaken Zelenskyy's government

Ukrainian authorities seized stacks of U.S. dollars during raids targeting former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who allegedly planned to bribe lawmakers

Jan 15 • 6:02 PM EST • Politics • foxnews.com

Ukrainian Politics Has Reawakened. Zelensky Must Tread Carefully.

The Ukrainian leader is reshuffling his cabinet as a corruption scandal reshapes the political landscape at a pivotal point in peace negotiations.

Jan 4 • 5:00 AM EST • Politics • nytimes.com

Trump says contested allegation that Ukrainian drone targeted a Putin residence is ‘not good’

Dec 29, 2025 • 2:00 PM EST • Politics • cnn.com

Takeaways from Trump’s meeting with Zelensky in Florida

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traded freezing, missile-tormented Kyiv on Sunday for the frescoed dining room at Mar-a-Lago, where he hoped to gain President Donald Trump’s sign-off on a revised 20-point peace plan to end the war in his country.

Dec 28, 2025 • 7:10 PM EST • Politics • cnn.com

Zelensky and Trump to meet in Florida after weeks of intensive peace talks

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives here Sunday as his frozen capital of Kyiv comes under assault by Russian missiles and drones, a deadly reminder from the war’s aggressor that its attacks would continue even amid accelerated peace talks.

Dec 28, 2025 • 4:00 AM EST • Politics • cnn.com

Ukrainian soldiers have incredible tactical patience and are far happier moving slowly than the British military

The Ukrainians are "are very happy being slow" as they know they need to secure everything, a British military officer told BI.

Dec 24, 2025 • 12:16 PM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Ukrainian troops say 'droid' with .50-cal gun fought off Russians for 45 days

It's one of the first times that Ukrainian troops have said they used a ground drone to replace humans in holding the line for an extended period.

Dec 23, 2025 • 3:49 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Ukrainian drones hit a Russian 'shadow fleet' tanker in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time, security official says

A source in the Security Service of Ukraine told Business Insider that the attack was carried out more than 1,240 miles away.

Dec 19, 2025 • 9:00 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Refugee and migrant health system review in Lithuania

Lithuania has experienced a substantial increase in the number of refugees and migrants, particularly following the 2021 Belarus border situation and the mass displacement from Ukraine in 2022. By late 2024, over 91,000 Ukrainians had been cumulatively registered in Lithuania, with about 47,000 holding valid temporary protection status. This increase, alongside sizeable communities of Belarusian nationals, Russian citizens and other regular migrants covered under compulsory health insurance contributions, has brought new challenges for Lithuania’s health system, especially related to continuity of care, interpretation support and equitable access across municipalities. This report presents the findings of a joint review of the health system in Lithuania, conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Lithuania, and other partners. The review examines the capacity of Lithuania’s health system to provide services for refugees and migrants. It focuses on the health challenges facing refugees and migrants, the policies and systems in place to address these challenges, and the opportunities to strengthen long-term health system capacity. Furthermore, the report offers practical recommendations for addressing the barriers refugees and migrants face in accessing health services.

Dec 14, 2025 • 7:00 PM EST • Health • who.int

Ukrainian 'Droid' lay in wait on a road at night and ambushed Russians with an M2 Browning

The ground drone is seen blasting a Russian MT-LB with .50 caliber rounds, in a rare extended look at how fighting robots are being used in the war.

Dec 11, 2025 • 12:04 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Former Russian chief commander gave 'entire Russian intelligence community' a failing grade for Ukraine attack

Col. Gen. Vladimir Chirkin said Moscow's leadership was "unprepared" and misled into thinking 70% of Ukrainians supported Russia.

Dec 4, 2025 • 1:07 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Ukrainians say their cheap interceptor drones are catching Russia's new turbojet Shaheds

Russia's turbojet Geran-3s are much faster than the usual Shaheds, but Ukrainians that their cheap interceptors took several down for the first time.

Dec 1, 2025 • 12:02 AM EST • Business • businessinsider.com

Trump expresses confidence in Russia-Ukraine deal following Rubio and Witkoff talks with Ukrainian officials in Florida

Nov 30, 2025 • 8:13 PM EST • Politics • cnn.com

U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators meet as Donald Trump seeks to broker an end to the war

High-level peace talks were underway Sunday in Hallandale Beach.

Nov 30, 2025 • 12:19 PM EST • Politics • floridapolitics.com