Ukrainian fencing star Olga Kharlan won her country’s first medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics on July 29, taking bronze in the women’s saber event. In an emotionally charged statement, Kharlan dedicated her medal to all the Ukrainian athletes “who couldn’t come here because they were killed by Russia.” According to the Ukrainian authorities, a
Belarus is often overlooked by the Euro-Atlantic policy-making community, with many taking for granted the relative stability represented by Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka during his three decades in power. In reality, however, today’s Belarus may soon reach a fork in the road that will force its people to choose between European democracy and Eurasian autocracy.
The annual NATO summit in early July resulted in a range of encouraging statements and practical measures in support of Ukraine. However, this widely anticipated gathering in Washington DC failed to produce the kind of decisive steps that could convince Vladimir Putin to end his invasion. It was already clear some time before the NATO
On July 19, Wall Street Journal reporter and US citizen Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to sixteen years in Russian prison on espionage charges. The same day, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist who holds dual American-Russian citizenship, was sentenced to six and a half years by a Russian court for supposedly spreading
As I listened to world leaders announce the signing of the Ukraine Compact on the sidelines of NATO’s 75th anniversary summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, my mind drifted back to September 13, 2022. On that cold, rainy day, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and I first unveiled the Kyiv Security Compact concept. President Zelenskyy’s
As perhaps the most pro-Kremlin and anti-Western leader of any EU or NATO member state, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban makes for an unlikely mediator in efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. This did not prevent the Hungarian leader from embarking on an ambitious series of international visits in early July that he dubbed
In December 2023, Ukraine’s largest telecom operator, Kyivstar, experienced a massive outage. Mobile and internet services went down for approximately twenty four million subscribers across the country. Company president Alexander Komarov called it “the largest hacker attack on telecom infrastructure in the world.” The Russian hacker group Solntsepyok claimed responsibility for the attack. This and
This week marked another milestone in the Battle of the Black Sea as the Russian Navy reportedly withdrew its last remaining patrol ship from occupied Crimea. The news was announced by Ukrainian Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk, who signaled the historic nature of the Russian retreat with the words: “Remember this day.” The withdrawal of Russian
At the beginning of July, I was one of twenty internationally-based Belarusian academics, analysts, and journalists to be sentenced in absentia by a court in Minsk on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government and taking part in an extremist group. News of my ten-year sentence provoked very conflicting emotions. While many colleagues congratulated me
The bombing of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital in Kyiv on July 8 has sparked a wave of global condemnation, with US President Joe Biden calling the attack a “horrific reminder of Russia’s brutality.” Meanwhile, others have noted that this latest airstrike was not an isolated incident. “Once again, Russia has deliberately targeted residential areas and
