Bottom lines up front

• US temporary protected status for Haiti is set to expire, and Haiti’s governing Transitional Presidential Council will soon reach the end of its mandate.
• The combined result could result in more dysfunction in Haiti and an increase in emigration to the wider region.
• The Trump administration, which has prioritized security in the Western Hemisphere, has options among existing programs to help create a safer, more stable Haiti.

WASHINGTON—Two deadlines in the first week of February—the end of US temporary protected status (TPS) for Haiti and the expiration of the mandate for Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (TPC)—threaten to intersect in ways that could further destabilize Haiti and the broader region. 

Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, Haiti has found itself mired in turmoil. The government is largely nonfunctional, the economy is effectively paralyzed, basic services are collapsing, and gangs now control nearly 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince. More than 1.4 million people are internally displaced, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, while close to two million are facing acute food insecurity. The result, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned the Security Council this past August, is “a perfect storm of suffering.”

Haiti’s slow decline isn’t occurring in isolation. For the United States, a top destination for Haitians, the country’s continued deterioration is not a distant tragedy but a policy challenge with profound consequences. For the Trump administration, which has reasserted the importance of the Western Hemisphere in its strategy documents and actions, this is an opportunity to continue those efforts. To prevent Haiti’s further collapse, the Trump administration should focus on leveraging pre-existing, common-sense policies to stabilize the country in the short term and build state capacity to lay the groundwork for its longer-term recovery. The result would be a safer, more stable Haiti—and a safer, more secure Western Hemisphere. 

TPS expires . . .

The primary US policy tool—and the more immediate deadline—is TPS, a bipartisan humanitarian protection program that allows migrants from countries deemed unsafe to live and work in the United States for a temporary but extendable period. Haiti was first designated for TPS just days after a catastrophic earthquake struck the country in January 2010, and it has since remained eligible amid worsening political and security crises. As of March 2025, 330,735 Haitian nationals living in the United States had TPS, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The US-based diaspora sends billions of dollars home each year in remittances, an economic lifeline for Haitians facing economic deprivation. 

Barring further extensions, which are not expected at this point, TPS for Haiti is set to expire on February 3. After that date, Haitians in the United States will need to have another lawful status to remain in the country or risk deportation, even though crisis conditions persist in Haiti. 

. . . and so does the TPC’s mandate

Just days after TPS ends, Haiti faces an internal deadline that reveals another layer of dysfunction: governance. 

This year marks the country’s fifth without a president, its tenth without holding presidential elections, and its third without a single democratically elected official in power. On February 7, the TPC—the nine-member interim body currently running the Haitian government—will reach the end of its mandate.

Since 2024, the TPC’s principal duty has been to create the conditions needed to hold free and fair elections by the time their term expired. Despite undertaking several notable efforts, the TPC stated that the country’s unfettered security situation rendered elections “materially impossible” by the February deadline. The first round of elections is now set for August 2026, though experts warn the timeline will be difficult to meet absent meaningful security gains. 

As the clock winds down on the TPC’s mandate, some members have launched a last-ditch effort to remove the sitting prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. Appointed by the TPC and viewed as Washington’s preferred pick to run the government after February 7, Fils-Aimé has become the target of members’ efforts to maintain influence beyond the transition window. In response, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Fils-Aimé to offer support and restricted the visas of multiple members of the TPC. 

There is little consensus on what will replace the TPC when its term inevitably ends. Will there be a power vacuum, and if so, will gangs fill it? Fils-Aimé has ruled out negotiations with powerful gangs regarding Haiti’s political future. This lack of clarity risks undermining legitimacy and further weakening the state’s capacity to combat the security crisis.

Consequences of these looming deadlines

While the expiration of both TPS and Haiti’s interim government in the same week is coincidental, the possible consequences of each could exacerbate Haiti’s internal crisis and expand the risks it poses to regional security. 

In this context, the Trump administration’s decision not to renew TPS for Haiti risks accelerating the country’s decline and backfiring by fueling additional migration. In the absence of a stable government in place to manage returns, large-scale deportations to an already fragile country—even though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has deemed it “safe” enough for return—could deepen internal displacement and drive more irregular migration, including to the Dominican Republic and the United States. 

Early signs of this strain are already visible on the ground. With Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince closed for more than a year due to gang violence, US deportation flights have arrived in Cap-Haitien, a comparatively stable northern city already strained by internal displacement and limited municipal services. Cap-Haitien is also home to Haiti’s vital textile sector, which the US Congress recently voted to continue supporting through reauthorization of the HOPE and HELP Acts. Any large-scale increase in deportations could further overwhelm local capacity, risking the destabilization of one of the country’s most stable regions. 

And the repercussions of these deadlines would extend beyond increased migration. According to the Organized Crime Index, Haiti’s porous borders and weak enforcement mechanisms have enabled transnational criminal networks to thrive, engaging in drug and weapons smuggling that is likely to continue. As of May 2025, two Haitian gangs—the powerful Viv Ansanm coalition and the Gran Grif gang—have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the US government, underscoring the security threat that they pose. 

What Washington can do

Haiti’s overlapping crises are multi-pronged and deeply rooted, and no single policy measure will remedy years of state collapse. Amid renewed discussions of the Monroe Doctrine, past US involvement in Haiti—from the 1915 occupation to later interventions in the 1990s and 2000s—can rightly be critiqued for contributing to the erosion of Haitian institutions. Despite these challenges, it remains in the United States’ best interest to help restore a measure of stability in Haiti. 

Redesignating Haiti for TPS would help advance the administration’s broader goal of ensuring the Western Hemisphere “remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough” to prevent mass migration to US borders. Extending TPS would provide humanitarian protection and create economic opportunity for Haitians while also giving Haitian authorities time to rebuild governing capacity after the TPC’s mandate expires. However, the Trump administration is unlikely to pursue this option. 

But the administration has options to improve state capacity beyond immigration policy.

One is the UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force (GSF), which has received US support in its aim to both suppress violence and pave the path for eventual elections. Although intended to improve previous models, critics warn that the GSF, which is expected to reach full strength by summer, is still unlikely to produce meaningful results. 

The GSF illustrates a long-recurring pattern in Haiti policy, in which external actors construct parallel structures separate from Haitian institutions to address short-term challenges, only to leave little to no state capacity once funding or political support inevitably dissipates. Rather than repeating this pattern, a comprehensive vision for US-backed security policy should explicitly prioritize training and supporting Haitian forces—whether that be the Haitian National Police or a revitalized national military—so that security gains can endure long after international forces depart. 

The same logic should guide US thinking on a democratic transition. While holding elections is politically necessary and could help re-establish the rule of law, conditions on the ground mean a vote is currently infeasible and could result in a worse outcome than the status quo. 

To ensure elections are the result of stability rather than a substitute for it, the United States should prioritize institution-building approaches such as the Global Fragility Act (GFA), which was signed into law by US President Donald Trump in 2019 and implemented under the Biden administration. Although the GFA has since lapsed (and Haiti is no longer listed as a target country), a similar whole-of-government approach would align US diplomatic, security, and development tools around bolstering Haiti’s resilient civil society and the preliminary work done by the TPC. The framework for this involvement already provides a clear roadmap—now it is up to lawmakers and policymakers to follow it.

Critics of US involvement in Haiti often argue that the country is beyond repair. Yet, if the United States wants to send Haitian temporary residents home and build a more prosperous Western Hemisphere, it should support positive change rather than compound Haiti’s crises.

The United States may not be able to deliver immediate prosperity in Haiti, but promoting stability through coordinated action that strengthens Haitian state capacity is firmly in the US strategic interest. 

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Both the negotiations and military operations against the SDF have relied heavily on the relationships the new government has built with the international community in general, and the US government in particular. These relationships are a result of a strong focus in 2025 by Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani on re-connecting Syria to the international world. Now, in 2026, Syria’s government must turn inward, prioritizing further domestic reforms and improvements. Chief among these are continued security reforms, economic development, and writing a new constitution.

Changing domestic perceptions

On November 25, thousands of Alawis took to the streets across western Syria. It wasn’t just the first Alawi demonstration since the fall of Assad; it was the first time the community had voluntarily held a protest to voice their demands in Syria’s modern history.

One resident of rural Jableh described the event to me a few days later with a proud smile on his face,“ I am fifty five years old, during my entire life any protest here was forced by the regime,” he said. “Yesterday was special, it was by our own free will, we said our demands and returned to our homes relaxed.”

The demonstrators had three demands: rejecting sectarianism, releasing the Alawi soldiers captured during the final weeks of Assad’s reign, and implementing federalism in the coast. The demonstrations were guarded against Sunni counter-protestors by the new government’s General Security Forces.

In the hours and days afterwards, many Alawi activists and residents of the coast—those who did and did not participate—spoke to me with pleasant surprise about the security forces’ professional conduct. Other commentators noted that it was the first time in Syria’s history the government had protected people criticizing it.

“So many were terrified of how the government would respond,” remarked a media activist from rural Jableh, “but we made our speeches and we were safe, and now the area feels relaxed for the first time.”

Several Alawi activists who had previously distrusted security forces told me that the day was a potential turning point in how they view local government forces.

“We trust the Ministry of Interior now, even if we don’t trust the government politically,” added the activist.

It was a stark change from the first months after Assad fell, when members of the nascent General Security forces were frequently accused of robbings and beatings, engaging in sectarian harassment, and at times executing Alawi civilians and ex-regime soldiers during raids on insurgents.

Their discipline in these most recent protests was a result of a year of reforms and institution building, reflecting broader developments across all Syrian ministries. This first year focused on rebuilding core state institutions, from security to basic administration.

Rebuilding government institutions

Outside of the public’s view, Syria’s new government spent much of its first year rebuilding the basic bureaucratic capacities of the state, which had been left gutted and derelict by the Assad regime. Regulatory agencies, courts, and basic services departments all needed to be repaired, staffed up, and streamlined. Critical but mundane state functions like water well licensing and civil registries took much of the year to rebuild. By the fall of 2025 many of these offices had begun functioning again, though often inundated with paperwork and requests from their communities.

In Homs, for example, the central court processes nearly two thousand cases a month involving administrative registrations such as property transfers, birth and death certificates, and marriage and divorce papers, a senior official told me in December. Of the twelve sub-courts across the Homs countryside, those in Palmyra and Qusayr remain non-functional due to physical damage while the courts in Talkalakh and Hassiyah are only partially functioning, having received only basic emergency repairs, according to the same official.

The massive task of (re)building the state forced the new authorities to adopt a pragmatic approach to employment. Most government employees today are the same people who were employed under the old regime. Even the Ministry of Interior (MoI) has retained non-Sunni administrative staff across several departments. Yet, every ministry still had to investigate and purge corrupt, regime-era employees or those who had criminal records, according to my discussions with officials from multiple ministries. Replacing these individuals with a qualified workforce has taken time. For the Ministry of Justice, it has been training a new batch of government judges and lawyers throughout the second half of 2025, with the first class slated to finish by early 2026.

Partial security reforms

These core state-building steps have begun to bear fruit in recent months. Governorate-level institutions have now expanded into the countrysides, and basic services like electricity have improved across both cities and the countryside (though to a lesser extent in the latter). Parallel to this, the new government had also undertaken the monumental task of creating new security and military forces. The MoI and Ministry of Defense (MoD) faced unique challenges and circumstances, each pursuing its own path and ultimately resulting in divergent outcomes. The MoI, responsible for civil policing and internal security, had to rapidly expand its forces while immediately dealing with the triple threat of ongoing Islamic State attacks, inter-communal and vigilante violence, and a growing ex-regime insurgency. The MoD, on the other hand, has had to merge dozens of armed factions with a long history of competition and violations against civilians into a single army.

Security reforms have been centered around internal accountability and coordination mechanisms. For example, Damascus formed the Military Police and Military Intelligence to monitor, investigate, and arrest security members implicated in crimes, and created additional command layers to strengthen command and control. Despite these structural improvements, Syrian opinions of the two security branches remain mixed. One year on, the MoI is generally viewed as responsive and professional, based on my months of fieldwork. Nearly every one of the activists and civilians that I have worked with over the past year have spoken about the improved professionalism and the positive engagement by most local MoI officials. Nonetheless, many remain unsure if this improvement is structural or simply, “a response to American pressure.”

Yet the army is widely distrusted due to its role in the March coastal massacres and July Sweida massacres. While its conduct has markedly improved during the fighting against the SDF in Aleppo and the northeast, many Syrians still distrust army units, especially compared to the MoI. Most army units have been pulled away from civilian areas, yet the presence of small bases on the outskirts of some rural areas remains a major complaint.

One man in southern Tartous governorate put concisely a feeling many have expressed to me in recent months: “Please just replace the army with general security checkpoints.”

Key goals in 2026

The first year of liberation saw the foundation laid for a new Syrian state. The two most important projects were the aforementioned security reforms and al-Sharaa’s tireless campaign to reconnect the country with the international community. Hundreds of diplomatic meetings in Damascus and international visits have succeeded in removing the final major sanctions against Syria and its leaders. Now, the country’s new government must prioritize three key domestic files: the economy, the constitution, and civil peace.

In September, I attended a meeting with al-Sharaa in which the president emphasized the importance of providing jobs and economic security to the entire country. Al-Sharaa has repeatedly linked economic development to social stability, something echoed by most Syrians I have met. Damascus is now largely unfettered in this pursuit as it enters its second year post-Assad, but it must begin to make tangible progress on the ground where most Syrians feel there has been little to no economic improvement.

The second most common complaint I’ve heard from Syrians is the lack of a new constitution or transitional justice for regime-era criminals. These two developments are directly linked and will likely be the two biggest milestones of 2026. Serious transitional justice steps have been delayed by the lack of a new constitution, as the current regime-era constitution lacks the necessary legal codes for trying regime officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Therefore, the first test will come when al-Sharaa appoints the remaining one-third of the People’s Assembly, whose first two-thirds were elected by committees across the country in August. The People’s Assembly will then be tasked with drafting a new constitution. The composition of the al-Sharaa-appointed third and the contents of this constitution will be closely judged and must reflect a commitment to equal rights under a civil state. Once ratified, this new constitution will allow for the full transitional justice process to unfold.

Despite the significant structural improvements that have been within government institutions over the past year, major fault lines remain within the society. These divisions are more nuanced than simple sectarian divides and are unique to each locality. For this reason, a local approach to national dialogue and inter-communal peace is required. The improvements that have been made within the MoI must be joined by improvements in local dialogues, particularly in coastal and central Syria, led by civil society and influential locals with the support of local security officials. These can take the forms of civil peace committees, civil councils, or civil and humanitarian work that brings together members of diverse communities.

Local security and political leaders will play a key role in addressing the grave security threats and civil strife prevalent across many regions. But their efforts are limited at times by ineffective or oppressive local officials, who can be damaging to trust building. This year should be one of local dialogue, both within communities and between them, with an expanded effort from the central government in Damascus as well as Syrian and international non-governmental organizations to work on social cohesion and civil peace. This requires consistent government engagement with local civil society as well as tangible changes on the ground regarding economic and security concerns.

The government would be remiss to view these solely as state-building files. Syria faces ongoing internal and external security threats exacerbating a fragmented society reeling from sixty years of Assad regime crimes. These three files are the foundations of Syria’s near future. Damascus should support the work of local and national activists, whether in civil peace initiatives or humanitarian outreach, to strengthen its approach to the constitutional drafting process and to local civil peace. Syria’s new government may feel confident in the real progress it has made in rebuilding the state after one year of liberation, but it cannot underestimate the difficulty it faces in gaining the trust of the country in year two.

Gregory Waters is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and writes about Syria’s security institutions and social dynamics.

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Russian strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure are nothing new, of course. On the contrary, such attacks have been a routine feature since the onset of the full-scale invasion nearly four years ago. However, the current bombing campaign is by far the most comprehensive of the war. In recent months, Russia’s attacks on civilian targets have expanded dramatically in scope as the Kremlin seeks to inflict maximum harm on Ukraine’s population by denying them access to heating, electricity, gas, and water during the coldest period of the winter season.

The impact has been devastating, particularly as most residential districts in Ukrainian cities continue to rely on Soviet-era central heating systems powered by huge plants that are almost impossible to defend. The Kremlin has ruthlessly exploited this weakness with repeated bombardments of the same facilities to disrupt repair efforts. While teams of Ukrainian engineers continue to work miracles, each successive attack makes their task more difficult.

Ukrainians have responded to plummeting temperatures and freezing apartments with a range of improvised solutions such as erecting tents indoors and heating bricks on gas stoves to generate some precious warmth. There has also been plenty of trademark Ukrainian wartime defiance on display, with local communities rallying in support of one another, posting lighthearted videos on social media, and holding street parties in the snow.

At the same time, many have expressed frustration over the continued media emphasis on Ukrainian resilience amid a mounting humanitarian crisis that has left much of the country in desperate need of help. “Resilience doesn’t mean immunity. Ukraine cannot withstand everything indefinitely,” wrote Ukrainian commentator Iryna Voichuk on January 16. “Framing this as only a story of strength risks dulling the urgency of what’s happening.”

Others have echoed this sentiment, including some of Ukraine’s most prominent international supporters. “Mythologizing endurance is a quiet form of abandonment. Resilience does not mean invulnerability,” cautioned R.T. Weatherman Foundation president Meaghan Mobbs in a recent post. “When we speak as if Ukrainians can simply ‘take it,’ we absolve ourselves of responsibility.”

With the present arctic weather conditions expected to continue well into February, the situation in Ukraine is critical. In the high-rise apartment blocks that dominate Ukraine’s cities, many less mobile residents have already been housebound for weeks and will likely remain trapped in frigid darkness throughout the coming month. The outlook is particularly grave for the elderly, those with young families, and people in need of medical care. In other words, Russia’s present bombing strategy appears to have been specifically tailored to target the most vulnerable members of Ukrainian society.

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.

As the potential for large-scale loss of life becomes increasingly apparent, international audiences are waking up to the true extent of Russia’s criminal intentions. Wall Street Journal chief foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov recently referred to Russia’s winter bombing campaign as “Putin’s genocidal effort to make Kyiv unlivable.” It is easy to see why such terms are now being employed. The 1948 UN Genocide Convention identifies “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” as one of five recognized acts of genocide. At the very least, Russia’s current actions closely resemble this definition.

The current winter bombing campaign reflects a broader trend of mounting Russian attacks against Ukraine’s civilian population. According to UN data, 2025 was the deadliest year of the war for Ukrainian civilians since 2022, with more than 2,500 people killed and over twelve thousand injured. This was 31 percent higher than the figure for the previous year and 70 percent more than in 2023. Many of these deaths were due to a spike in Russian missile and drone strikes on civilian targets including residential buildings, hospitals, and a children’s playground.

Russia also stands accused of conducting a systematic campaign of drone strikes targeting members of the public in the front line regions of southern Ukraine. These attacks have been dubbed a “human safari” by terrified locals. They involve the use of drones with video camera guidance systems to hunt individual victims, underlining the deliberate nature of the killings. An October 2025 United Nations investigation into this drone terror found that Russia was guilty of “systematically coordinated actions designed to drive Ukrainians out of their homes,” and concluded that the Kremlin’s actions in southern Ukraine qualified as the crimes against humanity of murder and of forcible transfer of civilians.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

Putin is dramatically escalating attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population because he cannot win the war on the battlefield. When he first launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin was expecting a quick and complete victory. Instead, his army has become bogged down in a brutal war of attrition that will soon enter a fifth year.

Despite pouring vast resources into the invasion and placing his entire country on a war footing, the Kremlin dictator has been unable to secure a decisive breakthrough. Many in Moscow had hoped the return of Donald Trump to the White House would transform the military situation, but even a dramatic decline in US aid for Ukraine over the past year has failed to turn the tide in Russia’s favor. Putin’s army captured less than one percent of Ukrainian territory during 2025, while suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties. At the present glacial pace, it would take Russia decades and millions of men to fully subjugate Ukraine.

In his official statements, Putin continues to project confidence and boast of his invading army’s success. However, with so few genuine victories to toast, this has often meant inventing imaginary advances. Putin’s habit of exaggerating Russian gains came back to haunt him in late 2025 when he repeatedly claimed to have captured the Ukrainian city of Kupyansk, only for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to personally visit the city and record a selfie video exposing the Russian ruler’s lies. This embarrassing episode underlined the growing credibility gap between Putin’s bold talk of inevitable Russian victory and the far more sobering battlefield reality of minimal Russian gains and disastrous losses.

With no obvious route to military victory, Putin is now openly embracing a strategy of terror tactics against Ukraine’s civilian population. He hopes that by weaponizing winter and putting millions of lives at risk, he can finally break Ukrainian resistance and force Kyiv to capitulate. Europe has not witnessed criminality on such a grand and terrible scale since the days of Hitler and Stalin.

So far, the international response to Russia’s winter bombing campaign has been utterly inadequate. While many of Kyiv’s partners have rushed to provide humanitarian aid, no additional costs whatsoever have been imposed on the Kremlin. Instead, it is Ukraine and not Russia that is reportedly being asked to make concessions. Unless this changes, the normalization of Russian war crimes will continue and Putin’s sense of impunity will become even more deeply entrenched. It will then only be a matter of time before other civilian populations experience the horrors currently taking place in Ukraine.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 7, 2026

Ukraine security guarantees are futile without increased pressure on Putin

By Peter Dickinson

Western leaders have hailed progress toward “robust” security guarantees for Ukraine this week, but until Putin faces increased pressure to make peace, Russia will remain committed to continuing the war, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict France

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin is weaponizing winter as Russia tries to freeze Ukraine into submission

By Peter Dickinson

Russia is “going all in” to destroy Ukraine’s power system, Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolisnyk said on January 13 following the latest in a series of major bombardments targeting civilian energy infrastructure in cities across the country.

Conflict Crisis Management

UkraineAlert Jan 20, 2026

Surrender or freeze: Putin’s winter blitz targets Ukrainian civilians

By Yuliya Kazdobina

Millions of Ukrainians have spent much of January without electricity and heating amid extreme winter weather conditions as Russia ruthlessly bombs Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure in a bid to freeze the country into submission, writes Yuliya Kazdobina.

Conflict Crisis Management

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Unable to win on the battlefield, Putin escalates war on Ukrainian civilians appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Russia’s attacks have led to dramatically deteriorating living conditions across Ukraine. Thousands of high-rise apartment buildings in large cities as well as smaller rural homes have been cut off from power, heating, and water for days at a time. As a result, indoor temperatures have dropped to dangerous levels. For the elderly, those with young children, and people suffering from health issues, the risks are particularly grave.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared a state of emergency in the country’s energy sector, while other Ukrainian officials have appealed to partners for urgent support. While international aid has begun arriving, the sheer scale of the crisis means that much may depend on weather conditions in the coming weeks.

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.

Attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure have been a routine feature of the war ever since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal, every single energy-generating facility in the country has been bombed. “There is not a single power plant in Ukraine that has not been hit by the enemy since the beginning of the war,” he commented last week. “Thousands of megawatts of generation capacity have been knocked out. Nobody else in the world has ever faced a challenge like this.”

Russia’s current aerial offensive began to escalate noticeably during the final months of 2025 ahead of the cold season. As temperatures plummeted in early January, there was a further intensification of attacks on Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure, with large numbers of drones and missiles concentrated on specific cities to overwhelm air defenses. The timing of Russia’s bombing campaign leaves no room for reasonable doubt; this was a premeditated attempt to target the Ukrainian population by weaponizing the winter weather.

The Kremlin’s goal is easy enough to decipher. By making Ukrainian cities unlivable and threatening to freeze millions of civilians, Moscow aims to break Ukraine’s resistance and force the Kyiv authorities to accept peace on Russian terms. In other words, the present bombing offensive is Putin’s response to US President Donald Trump’s peace efforts. Rather than agree to a ceasefire or offer concessions, Putin uses terror as a negotiating tool to secure Ukraine’s surrender.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

The targeting of Ukrainian civilians is not limited to attacks on critical infrastructure. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, 2025 was the deadliest year of the invasion for Ukrainian civilians since 2022. In a report released in early January, United Nations officials confirmed that more than 2500 Ukrainian civilians were killed in 2025. This was 31 percent higher than the figure for the previous year and 70 percent more than in 2023. A separate assessment by European governments reached similar conclusions and found that the scale of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians increased whenever the Trump administration attempted to advance peace negotiations.

The rising civilian death toll in Ukraine is largely due to increased Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities. Moscow’s mounting air offensive owed much to a spike in domestic drone production, which has made it possible to launch hundreds of drones at Ukraine in a single night. Russia has also been accused of conducting a large-scale campaign of individual drone strikes against civilians in southern Ukraine that terrified locals have branded a “human safari.” UN investigators reported in October 2025 that Russia’s targeted drone strikes on civilians were a crime against humanity.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians have increased amid mounting frustration in Moscow over the slow pace of the invasion. Despite holding the battlefield initiative throughout 2025, Putin’s army failed to achieve any significant breakthroughs and gained less than one percent of Ukrainian territory while suffering heavy losses. With little immediate prospect of military success, Putin seems to have decided that his best chance of victory lies in terrorizing the civilian population.

So far, Russia’s terror tactics do not appear to be working. A nationwide poll conducted in mid-January by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that a majority of Ukrainians continue to reject the Kremlin’s territorial demands in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of Ukrainians do not believe the present round of US-led negotiations will result in a lasting peace. Instead, most Ukrainians remain convinced that Russia aims to continue the war.

Today’s arctic conditions will eventually give way to milder weather, but the damage done to Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure in recent weeks will take months to repair. Nor is there any reason to believe that Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians will abate. On the contrary, the Kremlin is likely to escalate further in a bid to demoralize, destabilize, and depopulate the country. By seeking to freeze millions of Ukrainians, Putin has underlined his readiness to target civilians as he seeks to impose an imperialistic vision of peace through submission.

Yuliya Kazdobina is a senior fellow at the “Ukrainian Prism” nongovernmental analytical center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood

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Putin has no obvious route to victory in 2026 but cannot accept a compromise peace as any settlement that safeguarded Ukrainian independence would be seen in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat, write William Dixon and Maksym Beznosiuk.

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Veterans can shape the future of Ukrainian democracy

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The participation of military veterans in Ukraine’s political life has the potential to dramatically strengthen Ukrainian democracy and safeguard the country’s historic transition from centuries of Russian autocracy, writes Vasyl Sehin.

Conflict Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin is weaponizing winter as Russia tries to freeze Ukraine into submission

By Peter Dickinson

Russia is “going all in” to destroy Ukraine’s power system, Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolisnyk said on January 13 following the latest in a series of major bombardments targeting civilian energy infrastructure in cities across the country.

Conflict Crisis Management

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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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The post Surrender or freeze: Putin’s winter blitz targets Ukrainian civilians appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In this special #BalkansDebrief interview, Congressman Mike Turner, co-chair of the Congressional Bosnia Caucus and head of the U.S. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, discusses whether the United States is truly re-engaging in the Western Balkans under its new national security strategy released in late 2025.

The Republican Representative of Ohio’s 10th District – and former mayor of the city of Dayton, Ohio – Mike Turner speaks candidly with Ilva Tare, Resident Senior Fellow at the Europe Center, about U.S. sanctions, the Western Balkans Democracy and Prosperity Act included at the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and Washington’s long-term commitment to peace, stability, and democratic institutions in the region. He reflects on 30 years since the Dayton Peace Accords, arguing that while Dayton ended the war, it was never meant to be a permanent governing framework.

The conversation also addresses Bosnia and Herzegovina’s fragile political balance, including concerns over Milorad Dodik’s secessionist rhetoric. Rep. Turner notes that sanctions remain a tool on the table if destabilizing behavior continues, while emphasizing the need for renewed international engagement to support reform and reconciliation.

The Debrief also discusses Serbia–Kosovo normalization and U.S. diplomatic leverage, Russian influence in the Balkans, NATO and EU enlargement, Montenegro as an EU frontrunner, U.S. cooperation with Albania and North Macedonia, and a message to young people who feel the region’s democratic transition is taking too long.

#BalkansDebrief is an online interview series presented by the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and hosted by journalist Ilva Tare. The program offers a fresh look at the Western Balkans and examines the region’s people, culture, challenges, and opportunities.

Watch #BalkansDebrief on YouTube and listen to it as a Podcast.

Fellow

Ilva Tare

Resident Senior Fellow

Europe Center

Albanian English

The Europe Center promotes leadership, strategies, and analysis to ensure a strong, ambitious, and forward-looking transatlantic relationship.

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The post Is the U.S. Back in the Western Balkans? A Debrief with Congressman Mike Turner appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As Ukraine focuses on preventing further Russian advances and solidifying the front lines of the war, Kyiv has invested consideration resources in a major upgrade of the country’s defenses. This has resulted in what Britain’s The Economist recently described as a “massive fortification system” up to two hundred meters in depth covering much of the Ukrainian battlefield. “Ukraine now has the fortress belt it wishes it had in 2022,” the publication reported in early January.

Physical obstacles play an important role in this approach. Anti-tank ditches, razor wire, and concrete obstacles are layered to slow Russian advances. Defensive lines are often spaced within mortar range of one another, allowing Ukrainian units to trade space for time and counterattack against exposed enemy assault groups before they have had an opportunity to consolidate. The emphasis is on attrition and disruption rather than rigid territorial defense.

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.

Ukraine’s defensive strategy goes far beyond a reliance on traditional static barriers. Over the past year, there has also been a growing emphasis on dispersed, concealed, and flexible defensive networks. These small-scale fortified positions are often located underground or embedded in tree lines at strategic locations, and are supported by remote fires and decoys. Each individual node in these networks is designed to shape enemy movement rather than stop it outright, channeling attackers into deliberately prepared kill pockets without exposing defenders. By creating choke points for Russian troops, Ukraine aims to maximize Kremlin casualties and capitalize on its in-built advantages as the defending party in a war of attrition.

There are growing signs that this approach is working. Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi commented recently that the current strategy has proved particularly effective on the Pokrovsk front, which has witnessed some of the heaviest fighting of the entire war over the past year. According to Syrskyi, “timely and high-quality fortifications and engineering obstacles” enabled Ukrainian forces to inflict maximum losses on Russian units close to Pokrovsk and disrupt their plans, even when facing numerical superiority.

Where Ukrainian defenses have failed, the reasons are instructive. In areas such as Toretsk and parts of the Kharkiv front, troop rotations occurred without sufficient time or equipment to construct proper fortifications, leading to Russian gains. Constant Russian drone surveillance made the use of heavy engineering machinery dangerous, leaving units unprepared when assaults followed. These cases serve as confirmation that fortifications are not optional enhancements but foundational to battlefield survival under drone saturated conditions.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

Drones are at the heart of Ukraine’s defensive strategy, serving as a ubiquitous presence over kill zones and preventing localized Russian advances from consolidating into more substantial breakthroughs. Meanwhile, in some sectors of the front such as Pokrovsk, ground robotic systems are now being used to deliver the vast majority of supplies to troops. With this in mind, Ukrainian commanders argue that all future defensive lines should be optimized for both aerial and ground drones.

These technological advances do not eliminate the need for manpower. Even the most sophisticated fortifications require soldiers to react to emerging threats. When Russian units manage to infiltrate defensive lines or push into urban areas, infantry forces remain essential in order to clear and secure ground. While Ukraine’s improved fortifications are an encouraging development for the war-weary nation, no physical barrier can realistically stop Russia unless it is supported by sufficient quantities of well-trained troops.

Strengthening Ukraine’s fortifications and addressing manpower shortages will be among the top priorities for incoming Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who took up his post this week. Fedorov made his name in government as Minister of Digital Transformation. Since 2022, he has been one of the driving forces behind Ukraine’s rapidly expanding drone warfare capabilities.

Fedorov’s extensive defense tech background, along with his reputation as a modernizer who has countered institutional corruption through the digitalization of state services, has led to considerable optimism over his appointment. He is now faced with the twin challenges of improving Ukraine’s front line defenses while addressing the mobilization and desertion problems hindering the Ukrainian war effort. If he is able to make progress on these two fronts, Ukraine’s prospects for 2026 and beyond will begin to look a lot better.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood

By William Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk

Putin has no obvious route to victory in 2026 but cannot accept a compromise peace as any settlement that safeguarded Ukrainian independence would be seen in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat, write William Dixon and Maksym Beznosiuk.

Conflict Nationalism

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin is weaponizing winter as Russia tries to freeze Ukraine into submission

By Peter Dickinson

Russia is “going all in” to destroy Ukraine’s power system, Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolisnyk said on January 13 following the latest in a series of major bombardments targeting civilian energy infrastructure in cities across the country.

Conflict Crisis Management

UkraineAlert Jan 11, 2026

Belarus hosts nuclear-capable Russian missiles despite talk of US thaw

By Mercedes Sapuppo

Russia’s recent delivery of nuclear-capable Oreshnik missiles to Belarus is a very deliberate act of nuclear saber-rattling that underlines Belarus’s continued role in Putin’s war machine as Minsk seeks to improve ties with the US, writes Mercedes Sapuppo.

Belarus Conflict

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Ukraine’s enhanced fortifications are increasing the cost of Putin’s invasion appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ukrainian legislation does not allow for elections under the current martial law conditions. Beyond legal constraints, the practical obstacles to wartime elections are also overwhelming. Fair campaigning conditions and safety during voting cannot be guaranteed. Meanwhile, over ten million Ukrainians have been displaced by Russia’s invasion, with millions more currently serving in the military or trapped in Russian-occupied regions.

The impracticality of elections is broadly accepted by Ukrainian society and among the country’s European partners. They recognise that any premature vote would risk undermining the legitimacy of Ukraine’s institutions and eroding public trust at a moment when democratic resilience is essential. Tellingly, the idea of wartime elections is mainly promoted by Russia as part of Kremlin efforts to weaken Ukraine from within.

When conditions allow for free and fair Ukrainian elections to take place, a key issue will be the inclusion of those who are currently defending the country. According to a preliminary forecast by the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, after the war ends, the number of war veterans and their family members will reach five to six million people, or one in six Ukrainians.

Opinion polls indicate strong public trust in the Ukrainian military along with widespread support for the participation of veterans in Ukrainian politics. In contrast, Ukraine’s existing democratic and political institutions are among the least trusted entities in society. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that veteran involvement in politics could help counter this trust deficit and strengthen Ukrainian democracy.

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.

It is important to note that most Ukrainian veterans are not career military personnel. The vast majority of today’s Ukrainian soldiers joined the military voluntarily or were mobilized and expect to return to civilian life in peacetime. Veterans are also not a homogeneous group and do not represent a specific political agenda. They differ in views, values, and priorities, and should be understood as individuals seeking meaningful participation within legitimate democratic institutions.

Electing military personnel to public office is not without risk. Military experience does not automatically translate into political skill. Veterans transitioning from the battlefield to politics may face challenges in terms of essential political know-how such as policy coherence, negotiation tactics, coalition-building, and working within institutions. Without targeted support and a clear civilian framework, veterans risk being marginalized within political parties or exploited as symbolic figures without real influence.

Ukraine has previous practical experience of veterans entering politics, notably during the country’s 2014 parliamentary elections. One of the former military personnel elected on that occasion was Oksana Korchynska, who recalled at a recent Kyiv event how she “came from the front line, from Mariupol, two days before taking the oath of MP.”

Korchynska noted that in 2014, veterans were frequently included on electoral lists without being integrated into decision-making structures. While veterans enjoyed high public trust, their actual influence within parties and parliament has so far often been limited. This experience underscores a critical lesson: Political inclusion must be substantive, not symbolic. Veterans need pathways to real influence within parties and institutions, not mere visibility.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

Members of Ukraine’s veteran community do not need to wait for elections to take up a role in public life. Many are already serving in local government or building civic organizations and veteran associations. Kateryna Yamshchykova is a veteran who became acting mayor of Poltava in 2023. “Opportunities already exist for everyone,” she reflected. “Did I really want the position of acting mayor? It was the last thing I wanted in my life, but I understood that this responsibility had to be taken on in order to build the country we are fighting for.”

This kind of local engagement can help veterans develop the skills they need to run as candidates in national elections after the war ends. Democratic participation, civic habits, and political responsibility cannot be developed overnight. Instead, early engagement can help bring about a stable postwar transition.

For established Ukrainian political parties, engagement with the country’s veteran community is already becoming increasingly necessary to maintain public support. This will likely lead to intensified internal competition as veterans seek leadership roles alongside longstanding party members.

Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK and former commander of the Ukrainian army, has warned that established political elites might see veterans as a threat to their position. If this happens, everyone in Ukraine stands to lose. Public trust in politicians would erode further, undermining the legitimacy of decisions that will be essential for European integration and postwar recovery.

A critical step toward the meaningful political participation of veterans is the development of a clear legal framework for Ukraine’s first postwar elections. This should ensure inclusive participation, clarify registration requirements for new political parties, and potentially impose stricter campaigning rules to protect electoral integrity.

Ukraine’s democracy is not on pause; it is being reshaped under fire. The emergence of veterans as political actors represents a profound structural change in Ukrainian society. In and of itself, this change is neither a threat to democracy nor a guarantee of positive change. Instead, it requires a deliberate and inclusive approach. If Ukraine succeeds in integrating veterans into civilian political life while preserving pluralism, accountability, and fair competition, it may emerge from the war with a more resilient democracy capable of sustaining inclusive recovery, reforms, and European integration.

Vasyl Sehin is the WFD Country Director in Ukraine.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood

By William Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk

Putin has no obvious route to victory in 2026 but cannot accept a compromise peace as any settlement that safeguarded Ukrainian independence would be seen in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat, write William Dixon and Maksym Beznosiuk.

Conflict Nationalism

UkraineAlert Jan 11, 2026

Belarus hosts nuclear-capable Russian missiles despite talk of US thaw

By Mercedes Sapuppo

Russia’s recent delivery of nuclear-capable Oreshnik missiles to Belarus is a very deliberate act of nuclear saber-rattling that underlines Belarus’s continued role in Putin’s war machine as Minsk seeks to improve ties with the US, writes Mercedes Sapuppo.

Belarus Conflict

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin is weaponizing winter as Russia tries to freeze Ukraine into submission

By Peter Dickinson

Russia is “going all in” to destroy Ukraine’s power system, Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolisnyk said on January 13 following the latest in a series of major bombardments targeting civilian energy infrastructure in cities across the country.

Conflict Crisis Management

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Veterans can shape the future of Ukrainian democracy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As of January 13, the Human Rights News Agency, a US-based human rights group, estimated that the death toll has climbed above two thousand since the start of the protests on December 28 last year. This is while the Iranian government, as it has done previously, enacted a complete internet blackout, where the entire nation continues to remain under the world’s largest digital prison.

“I saw snipers in our neighborhood—in all these years I’ve never seen such scenes,” said Sahar, a doctoral student in the Saadat Abad neighborhood in Tehran, in a brief phone conversation via Starlink satellite connection.

Her voice was more distraught than in our previous conversations earlier in the week. She also explained how, since Saturday, fewer people have been going on the streets. “At first, there were families, old, young, but now everyone’s terrified, given the bloodbath.”

So far, Tehran’s crackdown on the demonstrations appears to have turned into a bloodbath, in which the only victims appear to be ordinary Iranian people—those who for long have been paying the price of the brutality of the Islamic regime, topped with the global isolation resulting from decades of sanctions and pressure imposed by the United States and its allies.

Against this backdrop, US President Donald Trump may have a real opportunity to be an effective dealmaker with Iran. However, if he is serious about a durable, win-win outcome for both the United States and Iranians, there is only one asset worth betting on: the Iranian people.

Today, Iranian society is more unified against the Islamic Republic than at any point since 1979. Nearly three weeks into the latest nationwide protests, this time ignited not by a single spark but by the country’s wider economic freefall, Iranians have taken to the streets in extraordinary numbers.

Speaking shortly before the regime’s blackout began, Sepideh, an Iranian journalist who has been arrested multiple times and isn’t using her last name for security concerns, explained how she believes Iran is at one of the “most dangerous junctures” in its modern history.

“There is zero possibility of reform within this regime,” she told me. “But history also shows that the [United States], the UK, and Israel don’t prioritize the Iranian people either—only their own interests. This is what makes me afraid of what’s coming.”

Asked about Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last monarch, she says with a deep sigh that “he has some supporters because there is no strong domestic opposition, as those voices have been crushed domestically over the years. But I struggle to believe in someone backed by foreign powers, tied to monarchy, and unable to form a coalition.”

Some others express a more fatalistic openness, including Sahar, who—prior to the internet blackout—told me how many Iranians “believe anything after this regime will be better. We want a complete separation of religion and state. This deck of cards needs to be reshuffled.”

These voices capture the nuances within the Iranian society today—united in its rejection of the Islamic Republic, deeply wary of foreign agendas, and desperate to reclaim agency over their own future.

For the United States, meaningful support for the Iranian people requires resisting the impulse to frame their uprising through the language of takeover or intervention, and instead prioritizing concrete protections for civilians in light of the brutal repression inside Iran. This means keeping Iran connected to the world, shielding protesters and journalists from digital isolation, and ensuring that accountability efforts target perpetrators of violence rather than a population already trapped between domestic repression and coercion from abroad.

Furthermore, it means treating internet access as humanitarian aid—funding circumvention support, satellite connectivity where feasible, and protection for independent journalists. This can help to ensure that the regime cannot repeatedly convert blackouts into a weapon of mass impunity.

An open, empowered Iranian civil society would not be a liability to US interests; it would be one of Washington’s greatest assets.

If the goal is to empower Iranians rather than freeze them into permanent victimhood, economic engagement must run alongside pressure on the state. This does not mean enriching the regime or reopening a flood-gate of funds to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-backed entities. Rather, it means expanding lawful, carefully assessed, people-to-people commerce that bypasses state hijacking and manipulation.

This includes enabling small and medium-sized Iranian businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs to access global markets; lifting travel bans for Iranian students, artists, medics, scientists and civil society members while banning entry to government-affiliated individuals; widening licenses that allow US and European firms to provide cloud services, payment rails, logistics support, and professional tools directly to Iranian users; and supporting diaspora-led investment vehicles that fund Iranian startups, cooperatives, and cultural industries without routing capital through regime-controlled entities. Such engagement gives Iranians income, skills, and stake—converting isolation into leverage and dignity rather than dependency.

Despite decades of sanctions, Iran has cultivated one of the most educated populations in the region and a resilient tech ecosystem that mirrors Silicon Valley’s platforms under far harsher conditions. Iranian youth have built local equivalents of Amazon, Uber, YouTube, and DoorDash with little capital and almost no global access. With the right engagement, Iran could generate trillions in long-term value—benefiting not only Iranians but also US businesses and consumers. A reintegrated Iran, charged by its people, would open a new frontier in trade, education, technology, and culture.

Meanwhile, none of this negates Iran’s military capacity. After more than four decades of isolation, Iran recently went head-to-head with the world’s most powerful militaries. Even Israeli defense analysts were surprised by some of its capabilities—proof that such sophistication does not emerge from a broken society. Beneath the Islamic regime’s aggression lies decades of scientific and technological investment made by the Iranian people themselves, who—if empowered and allowed self-determination—could become Washington’s strongest allies in the region.

Trump’s rhetoric amplifies the contradictions Iranians already live with. His warnings to Tehran and expressions of solidarity have landed with equal parts validation and fear. For some protesters, his words signal that their struggle is finally seen as entwined with an uncertainty of what’s to come. For others, Washington’s bombast risks giving the regime a pretext to paint the Iranian people’s unified dissent as foreign-engineered. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s accusations that protesters act “to please Trump” reveal just how threatening even rhetorical pressure can be to a regime terrified of losing control—one that’s now at its weakest point than ever before.

Iranians understand the stakes. They have watched Russia and China extract economic leverage from their isolation, and they fear becoming yet another bargaining chip. As Behzad, an Iranian journalist who is going by his first name for security purposes, told me, “everyone wants a piece of Iran. Sometimes I wish we lived in a poorer, smaller country; so at least we could live freely—far from domestic corruption and foreign interference.”

Still, across class, gender, and belief, Iranians remain united in one demand: the dismantling of the current regime. They do not ask the United States for bombs or saviors. They ask for surgical, effective, and thought-through support that enables them to reclaim their own agency in the absence of the current regime.

If Trump is serious about peace, stability, and a lasting legacy, the path forward does not run through air strikes or transactional deals with a failing theocracy. It runs through the Iranian people who, if given the chance, could build one of the world’s most dynamic democracies and one of Washington’s most valuable partners.

Tara Kangarlou is an award-winning global affairs journalist, author, and humanitarian who has worked with news outlets such as NBC, CNN, CNN International, and Al Jazeera America. She is also the author of the bestselling book The Heartbeat of Iran, the founder of nonprofit Art of Hope, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, teaching on humanized storytelling and journalism.

The post Voices from Iran: As rejection of government reaches all-time high, Iranians also wary of foreign intervention appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Executive summary

While US and European Union (EU) policies differ in their approaches to online safety and the regulation of the internet, there is agreement about the need to protect children online. That is one high-level takeaway from a recent round of US-EU dialogue hosted by the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) and the Atlantic Council.

Such dialogue helps to identify common policy approaches for the protection of minors and common approaches to enforcing rules. Ultimately, it can also help facilitate faster and more efficient rollout of technologies to protect users. Dialogue will also help global platforms develop services to comply with rules and expectations on both sides of the Atlantic.

At the recent roundtable hosted by CERRE and the Atlantic Council, the synergies and differences in regulatory approaches and philosophies on both sides of the Atlantic centred on four themes. For each theme, some common threads seemed ripe for further discussion and cooperation.

• New legislation and approaches to enforcement: In terms of the overall governance landscape, legislation has a key role to play in Europe and in the United States, where long-standing federal rules have been supported by an increasing number of state laws.The bulk of legislation in the EU—such as the Digital Services Act (DSA)—is adopted at the EU level, while some member states are adopting supplementary rules. In the United States, most legislation is now being adopted at the state level. Public enforcement by regulators plays a big role in the EU and the United Kingdom (UK). In the United States, state attorneys general are taking action to enforce rules, with powers similar to those of regulators in Europe. More alignment and cooperation on enforcement would be beneficial. Private enforcement through courts is also possible but, while this is already widespread in the United States, it is just emerging in Europe.
• The harms from which children should be protected: On both sides of the Atlantic, there is a large degree of alignment on the harms from which children need to be protected. A strong commonality is that rules in Europe and the US both require compliance by design to avoid particularly harmful conduct, such as unwanted contact by unknown adults. Other common design elements include data minimization, which is a central component of the European Commission’s guidelines on protecting minors under Article 28 of the DSA and in the UK Office of Communication’s (Ofcom) age-appropriate design code and guidance under the Online Safety Act (OSA).
• Balancing rights: To balance the protection of fundamental rights (in particular, privacy and freedom of expression) against the need to protect children, there is widespread agreement that everyone—not just children—deserves protections online. The EU, UK, and United States are all cautious about dictating which content is acceptable online and are instead converging on approaches that require platforms to use processes and systems to ensure safety by design. Ensuring the protection of fundamental rights is a common concern and, ultimately, a matter of balance, including at the enforcement level.
• Age verification: Current debates about banning access to social media and about age verification are critical in Europe and in the United States, both in general and in relation to certain types of platforms (particularly those that host pornographic content). There is no agreement on a single type of technology that should be used, but there are prototypes and guidance on the high-level principles that the technologies should reflect. There are similar discussions on both sides of the Atlantic about how to attribute responsibility for age assurance across the supply chain—i.e., where in the supply chain age verification should take place—and how the division of responsibilities between players in supply chains could work in practice.

Introduction

The EU has put in place important legal building blocks to protect children online. These include the DSA and the European Commission’s guidelines on Article 28 of the DSA, which require providers of platforms accessible to minors to “put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors.”¹ They also include the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), which contains rules to safeguard minors’ personal data and to protect children online, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which provides rules on collection and processing of minors’ data. Other proposals yet to be finalized include the pending Digital Fairness Act (DFA) proposal and the Regulation on Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).² Member states retain certain powers to enact national laws to protect minors online.³

In the United States, the protection of minors online is an important consideration at both the federal and state levels. At the federal level, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) proposal, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the COPPA 2.0 proposal all seek to address certain aspects of children’s safety online (in particular, privacy, advertising, and CSAM).⁴ At the state level, California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (CAADCA) has been challenged in court on First Amendment grounds.⁵ Other states, including Nebraska and Vermont, have recently adopted similar codes that they hope will withstand First Amendment scrutiny.⁶ Utah has also recently enacted a law to protect content-creating minors from financial exploitation and privacy violations.⁷

News headlines focus on apparent differences between US and European policies, which are spiraling into growing transatlantic tension. However, there is a large degree of alignment on the need to protect children online while also safeguarding fundamental rights such as privacy and freedom of expression.

The overall governance landscape

The European and US approaches are fairly aligned on some governance aspects of regulating child protection online. Since the adoption of its rules for video sharing platforms in 2018, the EU has embraced a legislative path to protect minors online.⁸ This legislative framework was strengthened in 2022 with the adoption of the DSA. Both the video sharing platform rules and the DSA are largely principle based and rely on a form of collaboration with the industry,placing the onus on the platforms themselves to decide what constitutes an appropriate and proportionate level of protection for minors. The UK has also adopted a legislative path with the OSA and the detailed guidance produced by Ofcom.⁹ Like the DSA, the OSA adopts a risk-based approach, with the larger and riskier platforms subject to stricter measures. The UK regulator, Ofcom, has supplemented the legislation with detailed guidance.

The European Commission recently adopted guidelines to help online platforms understand and comply with their obligations under Article 28 of the DSA, including setting out a list of recommendations for platforms, but these are nonbinding. Safety by design is at the heart of the guidelines. The EU’s legislative approach focuses on ensuring platforms put in place systems and processes, while steering away from regulating the type of content that should be outlawed.

So far, the EU’s legislative framework has not led to a full harmonization of approaches to protect minors, and some member states have adopted more restrictive approaches. For example, France, Germany, Ireland, and Italy have adopted supplementary legislation to protect minors from harmful content such as online pornography.¹⁰

In the United States, the federal government has adopted legislation such as the COPPA to tackle some problematic areas such as the need to protect minors’ personal data.¹¹ Despite heightened partisanship in Congress, leaders of both the Republican and Democratic Parties have expressed interest in supporting additional bipartisan legislation to protect children online.¹² Although there is less appetite for federal legislation with binding obligations on platforms in terms of platform liability, there is appetite at the state level to embrace the legislative path, and safety by design is the cornerstone of many of these initiatives.¹³ That being said, the Kids Online Safety Act (a federal initiative) received the support of sixty co-sponsors at the federal level, which shows that this is an area with some bipartisan support. The EU and the United States are also converging on some important aspects: more obligations are placed on larger platforms; there is an emphasis on protection and safety by design; and there is no “one size fits all” solution.

There is broad consensus among experts that, irrespective of geopolitical tensions, there has never been so much space for alignment at the policy level between different jurisdictions—and between Europe and the United States in particular. This is partly because Europe (with the DSA at the EU level and the OSA in the UK) takes a systemic risk approach and does not focus on moderating individual pieces of content. That places responsibility on the platforms to have processes and systems in place to design safe spaces at the outset.

There are also similarities in public and private enforcement of norms. In the EU and the UK, regulators play an important role in making sure that industry complies with the DSA, the AVMSD, and the OSA. In the United States, even if new federal laws are adopted, the creation of a dedicated federal regulator to publicly enforce the legislation is unlikely, though existing agencies such as the US Federal Trade Commission already have a remit over some of these issues. At the state level, attorneys general are empowered to enforce COPPA via civil actions despite it being a federal law. State attorneys general have many enforcement tools at their disposal, including the power to undertake industry-wide investigations. These are broadly in line with the enforcement powers of national competent authorities and the European Commission under the DSA (and Ofcom under the OSA). On both sides of the Atlantic, private enforcement through courts is also set to play an important role, though, to date, it has been more common in the United States than in either the EU or UK.

Harms against which children should be protected

In the EU, the harms against which children should be protected are potentially very wide and are not specifically defined in the DSA, which refers only to protecting minors’ “privacy, safety and security.”¹⁴ Furthermore, member states are free to set their own rules provided they are in the line with EU legislation.

Some harms are outlawed at the EU level, such as the sharing of child sexual abuse material, dark patterns (i.e., deceptive techniques used by online platforms to manipulate users’ behavior), the processing of minors’ personal data without the consent of parents, and the sending of targeted advertising to children based on profiling.¹⁵ US policy initiatives at the state and federal levels also identify these harms as targets for regulation. The dissemination of child sexual abuse material, for example, is already a criminal offense.

A strong focus of legislation to protect minors on both sides of the Atlantic is to make sure that children cannot be contacted on platforms by unknown adults. At the state level (Vermont in particular) lawmakers frame these as safety bills to avoid framing them as content regulation, which could bring challenges on First Amendment grounds. These design architecture elements, such as default settings that prevent children being findable, are also central in the European Commission’s guidelines on Article 28 of the DSA in the UK Information Commissioner’s Office’s age-appropriate design code and in Ofcom guidance under the OSA.¹⁶

Data minimization (meaning only a minimum amount of data can be gathered and processed) is seen as critical to mitigating harms in general, because there is a strong correlation between collecting vast amounts of data about children’s behavior online and using the data to target minors with harmful content. Also, data minimization could lead to stronger protection for all users. While enforcing data minimization principles is a challenge, it can be done. In the UK, for example, Ofcom is required to work closely with the data protection authority. Operational coherence and cooperation between regulators are crucial in this area.

Balancing fundamental rights

The debate about balancing the need to protect children against the protection of certain fundamental rights (especially privacy, freedom of expression, and the rights of the child) is critical in the United States and in Europe. Initiatives in Europe and the United States tend to focus on tools and processes to protect minors, but steer away from regulating content on the platforms. Despite this, there is mounting debate regarding whether laws are creating a form of censorship or unlawfully constraining free speech, limiting users’ choices, or infringing on the rights of children. The question is wider than the need to protect children online, in the sense that some content can be inherently dangerous for some individuals whereas that same content might not be harmful for another person (minor or adult). This need to protect users from harmful (but legal) content is the most difficult to reconcile with the need to protect freedom of speech and the need for data minimization.

In the United States, the question is being argued in court. Some federal courts have ruled that laws requiring age verification are unconstitutional because they undermine the US Constitution’s First Amendment and threaten privacy rights.¹⁷ Age verification laws are being challenged by NetChoice (a coalition of tech companies) and by free speech coalitions. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the age verification law in Texas does not violate the First Amendment because it only requires proof of age to access content that is obscene to minors; it does not directly regulate adults’ speech.¹⁸ In both the EU and the United States, a considerable amount of policy work and research is being conducted on how to balance safety and privacy, especially in the context of age assurance requirements.¹⁹

At the EU level, the debate about balancing rights was not prominent while the DSA and the AVMSD were being adopted, probably because the rules were principles based and did not mention bans or age verification per se. Furthermore, the DSA contains safeguards to protect fundamental rights, such as giving users’ the right to challenge content moderation decisions (such as removals of posts, demotions of content, and account suspensions). The central article on the protection of minors in the DSA (Article 28) assumes that there cannot be safety for minors unless other rights, such as privacy, are protected as well.

Now that the DSA is being enforced, the protection of minors has become an enforcement priority for the European Commission, and some member states are calling for bans on children accessing social media platforms, some political parties are questioning the legislation and the push for age verification solutions on free speech grounds. This debate is particularly intense in the context of the regulation on the fight against CSAM, which the European Parliament and the Council of the EU are amending in an attempt to reduce the impacts of CSAM detection mechanisms on privacy, particularly in the context of end-to-end encryption.

The ultimate goal should be to protect everyone online, not just minors. This would avoid the need to put in place age assurance and age verification.

A “digital age of consent” and age verification

The debates on getting the balance right on the need to protect minors online and the need to protect some fundamental rights are crystallizing on age verification and on proposals for an outright ban on access to social media for children.

To date, there is no outright ban at the EU level on children accessing social media. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had pledged to examine the questionwith the help of a panel of experts originally scheduled to be set up before the end of 2025.²⁰ Some member states are also discussing the option of a social media ban for children.²¹ There is a strong call in the commission’s recently adopted guidelines under the DSA for certain platforms (such as adult content platforms) to prevent children from accessing them. Also, the Danish presidency of the EU and ministers from twenty-five member states recently adopted the Jutland Declaration, which welcomed “assessments” of a digital majority age.²² This assessment could help to determine the age at which minors should be allowed access to social media and other digital services—“giving them more time to enjoy life without an invasive online presence.”²³ This question is also high on the agenda in the United States, with some states requiring social media to ban minors from accessing them (or requiring parental consent for a minor to have an account).²⁴

On age verification, there is no mandatory technology at the EU level, but the EU guidelines on the protection of minors adopted under the DSA set out principles that age verification technology used by online platforms should meet.²⁵ In particular, the systems should be based on the “double anonymity” principle. According to this principle, the platform knows the age of users without identifying them, whereas an external site—which carries out the age verification by issuing a token—does not know which site the user will visit. The EU is also about to launch an EU mini-wallet as a temporary solution, pending the adoption of national solutions.²⁶ Some member states have also set requirements on age verification that are enforced by national regulators.

In the UK, the OSA has just entered into force, and the biggest and most popular adult platforms such as Pornhub must now deploy age checks for users based in the UK. Other platforms—including Bluesky, Discord, Reddit, and X—have also announced that they will deploy age assurance in the UK as a result of the act. This has led to a surge in virtual private network (VPN) downloads, which shows the importance of global alignment where possible.

In the United States, as noted above, state legislation imposing age verification is subject to frequent court challenges.²⁷ As in Europe, there is little agreement among the states on the methods and tools to use when verifying the age of online users. Also, like in Europe, states seem to recognize that age assurance alone is not the solution.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the debates are similar in practice, including debates regarding how to attribute responsibility for age assurance across the supply chain (i.e., at what level age verification should take place, whether at the app store layer or by individual applications or websites). Questions about where verification happens raise additional questions about the extent to which other players in the chain can rely on this, or whether relying on a single point of verification could undermine safety by discouraging applications and websites from making their own assessments.

Michèle Ledger is a researcher at the Research Centre in Information, Law and Society (CRIDS) of the University of Namur where she also lectures on the regulatory aspects of online platforms at the postmaster degree course. She has been working for more than twenty years at Cullen International and leads the company’s Media regulatory intelligence service.

This issue brief benefits from the insights of discussants at an online roundtable on EU-US regulatory co-operation hosted jointly by CERRE and the Atlantic Council. However, the contents of this brief are attributable only to the author.

Providing high-quality studies and dissemination activities, the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) is a not-for-profit think tank. It promotes robust and consistent regulation in Europe’s network, digital industry, and service sectors. CERRE’s members are regulatory authorities and companies operating in these sectors, as well as universities.

CERRE’s added value is based on

• its original, multidisciplinary, and cross-sector approach covering a variety of markets (e.g., energy, mobility, sustainability, technology, media, and telecommunications);
• the widely acknowledged academic credentials and policy experience of its research team and associated staff members;
• its scientific independence and impartiality; and
• the direct relevance and timeliness of its contributions to the policy and regulatory development process impacting network industry players and the markets for their goods and services.

CERRE’s activities include contributions to the development of norms, standards, and policy recommendations related to the regulation of service providers, to the specification of market rules, and to improvements in the management of infrastructure in a changing political, economic, technological, and social environment. CERRE’s work also aims to clarify the respective roles of market operators, governments, and regulatory authorities, as well as contribute to the enhancement of those organizations’ expertise in addressing regulatory issues of relevance to their activities.

The Atlantic Council promotes constructive leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the Atlantic community’s central role in meeting global challenges. The council provides an essential forum for navigating the dramatic economic and political changes defining the twenty-first century by informing and galvanizing its uniquely influential network of global leaders. The Atlantic Council—through the papers it publishes, the ideas it generates, the future leaders it develops, and the communities it builds—shapes policy choices and strategies to create a more free, secure, and prosperous world.

The Atlantic Council’s Europe Center conducts research and uses real-time analysis to inform the actions and strategies of key transatlantic decision-makers in the face of great-power competition and a geopolitical rewiring of Europe. The center convenes US and European leaders to promote dialogue and make the case for the US-EU partnership as a key asset for the United States and Europe alike. The center’s Transatlantic Digital Marketplace Initiative seeks to foster greater US-EU understanding and collaboration on digital policy matters and makes recommendations for building cooperation and ameliorating differences in this fast-growing area of the transatlantic economy.

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The Europe Center promotes leadership, strategies, and analysis to ensure a strong, ambitious, and forward-looking transatlantic relationship.

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The post Transatlantic cooperation on protecting minors online appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The current wave of attacks have hit the Ukrainian capital Kyiv particularly hard. “The Russians are trying to disconnect the city and force people to move outside Kyiv,” Ukrenergo CEO Vitaliy Zaichenko told the Kyiv Independent. According to Zaichenko, around 70 percent of the Ukrainian capital’s approximately 3.5 million residents were left without electricity on Tuesday. Meanwhile, large numbers of apartments also had no heating amid subzero winter conditions.

Kyiv is one of multiple Ukrainian population centers currently facing rolling blackouts that in many cases can last for over 24 hours. Russia’s air offensive has also struck energy infrastructure supplying Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv, and many other major cities.

Teams of engineers are working around the clock to repair damaged facilities, fix power lines, and reconnect Ukrainian homes and businesses to the electricity grid. However, repeated Russian attacks are making it increasingly difficult to patch up battered equipment and find the necessary replacement component parts.

The bombing campaign appears to have been timed to coincide with the coldest period in over a year, with temperatures plummeting to minus fifteen Celsius (five degrees Fahrenheit) for extended periods of time. “ They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” stated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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.

This is not the first time Russian President Vladimir Putin has attempted to weaponize winter in his war against Ukraine. Russia launched a major air offensive against Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure in October 2022, establishing a pattern that would be repeated each year as the cold season approached. While this tactic is not new, the present destruction of the Ukrainian power grid is widely recognized as the most severe of the entire war.

In Kyiv and other cities, the Ukrainian authorities have established so-called Points of Invincibility in heavily populated areas featuring heating and internet access along with electricity sources that can be used to charge up personal devices and power banks. Visitors can also expect hot drinks and a warm welcome.

Throughout Ukraine the buzz of generators has become the background noise of the winter season. Many Ukrainians have installed backup power sources in their homes, which are typically able to provide electricity for a limited period of time. Portable gas stoves are also a common feature as people adapt and improvise in the extreme conditions caused by Russia’s bombardment.

With millions of Ukrainian civilians at risk of being trapped in freezing darkness for days at a time, the potential for a humanitarian catastrophe is obvious. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has already urged residents of the Ukrainian capital to temporarily leave the city if they are able to and move to less affected areas where power and heating are more readily available. With the present cold snap set to last for at least another week and further Russian attacks widely expected, fears are now mounting over a possible winter exodus to neighboring EU countries.

That may be exactly what Putin has in mind. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian civilians in a bid to break Ukraine’s resistance and depopulate large parts of the country. In addition to attacks on energy, heating, and other critical infrastructure, Russia has also launched large-scale drone strike campaigns designed to make entire towns and cities unlivable. A recent United Nations probe into Russia’s campaign of drone attacks throughout southern Ukraine’s front line regions concluded that Moscow’s actions amounted to the crimes against humanity of “murder and forcible transfer of population.”

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

As Russia attempts to freeze Ukrainians into submission, Kyiv desperately needs a wide range of international support. This includes alternative energy supplies to replace domestic gas production damaged in Russia’s attacks, along with spare parts to mend the country’s power stations and associated infrastructure.

Ukraine also urgently requires additional air defense systems and interceptor missiles. At present, Ukraine’s existing air defenses are struggling to cope with the dramatically increased intensity of Russia’s aerial attacks, which now routinely feature hundreds of drones along with dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles.

Most of all, Ukraine needs to be able to strike back. However much Ukraine’s network of air defenses improves, the sheer scale of the Russian bombardment means that a percentage of missiles and drones will inevitably reach their targets. The only truly effective defense is deterrence. In other words, Russia’s attacks will continue until Putin is restrained by the knowledge that Ukraine has the capacity to reply in kind.

The next few weeks will be among the most challenging of the war for Ukraine’s civilian population that will test the country’s famed resilience to the limit. “I think the Russians want to break us. They want to make Ukrainians angry and unhappy. They think this will make us go out on the streets and protest but that won’t happen,” Kyiv resident Valentina Verteletska told Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “This makes us tougher and more determined. War doesn’t make people bad or good but it amplifies who you are. It allows people to show who they are inside and we have seen a lot of people volunteering to help their neighbors.”

Many believe Russia’s wintertime bombardment of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure now represents Putin’s best chance to achieve some kind of breakthrough at a time when his army is struggling to advance on the battlefield. Russia gained less than one percent of Ukrainian territory in 2025 despite suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties, and is still fighting over villages located within walking distance of the front lines at the start of the invasion in February 2022.

Despite this lack of progress, Putin remains committed to his original invasion objective of extinguishing Ukrainian independence and forcing the country permanently back into the Kremlin orbit. He clearly has no qualms about targeting millions of Ukrainian civilians in pursuit of this criminal goal. “You can see with your own eyes what is going on,” commented Kyiv building manager Oleksandr Matienko. “They are trying to kill us. They can’t win any other way. So they are willing to do anything to destroy Ukraine.”

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood

By William Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk

Putin has no obvious route to victory in 2026 but cannot accept a compromise peace as any settlement that safeguarded Ukrainian independence would be seen in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat, write William Dixon and Maksym Beznosiuk.

Conflict Nationalism

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UkraineAlert Jan 8, 2026

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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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Putin is weaponizing winter as Russia tries to freeze Ukraine into submission appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This followed a series of similar recent statements from Kremlin officials reiterating Moscow’s uncompromising position and dismissing a 20-point peace plan prepared by Ukraine, Europe, and the United States. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared in December that Russia’s war aims in Ukraine will be met “unconditionally” and vowed to “liberate” what he termed as Russia’s “historical lands.”

Moscow’s approach toward peace talks has remained consistently uncooperative ever since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House one year ago. While Putin has been careful not to directly rebuff Trump in order to avoid provoking fresh sanctions, there have been ample indications that the Kremlin is not ready to engage seriously in US-led diplomatic efforts. Instead, Russia seems intent on stalling for time while escalating its invasion.

There are no signs that this trend will change anytime soon. Despite mounting economic challenges on the home front amid falling energy export revenues, Russia’s defense budget for 2026 remains close to record highs. Moscow will continue to prioritize domestic drone production this year, while also allocating large sums to finance the system of generous bonus payments and salaries for army recruits who volunteer to serve in Ukraine.

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.

Russia’s refusal to embrace the idea of a compromise peace should come as no surprise. After all, Putin has built his entire reign around the promise of restoring Russian greatness and reversing the perceived humiliations of the Soviet collapse. After nearly four years of full-scale war, a negotiated settlement that secured Ukraine’s status as an independent country would represent a major political failure.

Since 2022, Kremlin officials and Russian state media have consistently portrayed the invasion of Ukraine as an existential struggle against Western aggression with the aim of establishing a new world order and returning Russia to its rightful place as a great power. However, a peace deal based on the current line of contact would leave approximately 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and firmly anchored in the West. Such an outcome would be viewed in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat.

This framing creates a political trap of Moscow’s own making. Putin knows he would face a potentially disastrous domestic backlash if he accepted anything less than a clear Russian victory in Ukraine. Peace terms that failed to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin orbit would raise difficult questions about the enormous costs of the invasion. Russians would want to know why the country had spent vast sums of money and sacrificed so many men in order to achieve so little. Putin would risk entering Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

Putin has begun 2026 in a challenging position. He remains reluctant to upset Trump, but he dare not accept the compromise peace the US leader is proposing. Instead, Putin needs either total victory in Ukraine or indefinite conflict. Any attempt to end the war without establishing complete political control over Ukraine would threaten the stability of Putin’s own regime. His interests are therefore best served by seeking to prolong negotiations while working toward a military solution.

If Western leaders wish to change the current political calculus in Moscow, they must first acknowledge that there is no alternative to increasing the pressure on Putin. At present, the Kremlin dictator views escalation as necessary for regime survival and has no plans to end the war.

Two scenarios could disrupt this trajectory. A collapse in global oil prices combined with successful secondary sanctions enforcement could create an economic crisis that would force Putin to revise his priorities. Alternatively, mass casualties during a failed spring 2026 Russian offensive could trigger domestic instability, while also highlighting the fading prospects of a military breakthrough.

Both these outcomes are realistic but would require significant additional action from Ukraine’s partners. If the West is unable to muster the requisite political will, escalation remains Moscow’s most rational path in 2026. Putin has little choice but to continue his invasion. Even if Russian victory remains out of reach in the coming year, he knows he cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood.

William Dixon is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute specialising in cyber and international security issues. Maksym Beznosiuk is a strategy and security analyst whose work focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and international security. 

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 7, 2026

Ukraine security guarantees are futile without increased pressure on Putin

By Peter Dickinson

Western leaders have hailed progress toward “robust” security guarantees for Ukraine this week, but until Putin faces increased pressure to make peace, Russia will remain committed to continuing the war, writes Peter Dickinson.

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UkraineAlert Jan 8, 2026

Russia’s war on Ukrainian farmers threatens global food security

By Oleksandr Tolokonnikov

By attacking Ukrainian farmers, Russia seeks to undermine Ukraine’s food security, just as it targets the country’s energy infrastructure to deprive the civilian population of access to electricity and heating, writes Oleksandr Tolokonnikov.

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UkraineAlert Jan 8, 2026

Ukraine’s robot army will be crucial in 2026 but drones can’t replace infantry

By David Kirichenko

Ukraine’s growing robot army of land drones will play a vital role in the country’s defense during 2026, but they are not wonder weapons and cannot serve as a miracle cure for Kyiv’s manpower shortages, writes David Kirichenko.

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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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Putin cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The outbreak of violence killed more than twenty people, according to media reports, and displaced thousands of Aleppo residents.

It’s the latest iteration of conflict in a consequential and difficult year for Syria, as the country seeks to build stability after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and over a decade of brutal and factionalized civil conflict.

Our experts unpack why violence erupted, what it means for Kurdish and wider minority safety and integration under the new Syrian government, and how Washington is engaging.

1. What is the political and military background of this conflict?

On April 1, Damascus and the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG)-dominated SDF agreed on a localized integration arrangement covering the two SDF-held neighborhoods of Aleppo city. Despite the initial atmosphere of goodwill, SDF-affiliated Asayish forces that remained in these neighborhoods obstructed the implementation phase and refused to subordinate themselves to Aleppo’s Internal Security Forces, as stipulated in the agreement. 

On multiple occasions, Asayish units attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure, triggering violent clashes. Throughout this period, Damascus repeatedly agreed to cease-fires in an effort to preserve negotiations over the broader March 10 integration agreement with the SDF. However, after the deadline of the integration deal expired, final US-mediated talks in Damascus failed, and Asayish forces again targeted civilian infrastructure, and the Syrian army opted to launch a limited military operation.

—Ömer Özkizilcik is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

For the last fourteen years, the Kurds enjoyed de facto autonomy, and they currently control a large chunk of eastern and northeastern Syria. An agreement inked in March last year, which the Kurds reluctantly agreed to under immense external pressure, was meant to see the SDF and the Kurdish civilian institutions integrated into the Syrian state. It has effectively gone nowhere, with both sides blaming each other.  

The fighting in Aleppo broke out just days after negotiations stalled again and came to an end after external forces, notably the United States, intervened, preventing a potentially greater bloodbath. Turkey stated it would take action—if needed—on behalf of the Syrian government, and Israel threw its weight in behind the Kurds.

—Arwa Damon is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance (INARA).

2. What does the withdrawal of SDF-affiliated units mean for stability in Aleppo?

The withdrawal does bring with it a sigh of relief for the residents of Aleppo. But taking stock of the destruction, for those who lost loved ones, it’s hardly a win. The days-long fighting further ripped open one of the many fissures that the Syrian government says it has been trying to repair as it attempts to consolidate power under Damascus. The Kurdish population—who largely remain wary of President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government—might just prove to be the toughest to win over.  

While an even worse scenario has been avoided for the time being, if anything, the fighting is evidence of how much more work lies ahead for Syria and how its path to “stability” will not necessarily be free of suffering.

—Arwa Damon

3. What does the dismantling of the Kurdish military presence in Aleppo mean for SDF status in Syria?

Losing Aleppo weakens the SDF’s negotiating position significantly. Damascus will never support the SDF in retaining an autonomous military or administrative structure in the northeast, but al-Sharaa has repeatedly said that Kurdish language and cultural rights will be enshrined in the future constitution. The current government is already highly localized, and we will likely see the same model applied to the northeast with or without a peaceful integration of the SDF.

—Gregory Waters is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and writes about Syria’s security institutions and social dynamics.

4. How credible are government assurances of inclusion and rights protections to Kurdish communities?

The components of the new Syrian government have a mixed track record of treatment towards Kurds. The factions that came from Idlib, most notably Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have no serious history of ethnic targeting of Kurds, while several Syrian National Army (SNA) factions, which now serve in parts of the new army, have been sanctioned for years for systematic abuses against Kurds in northern Aleppo. It is now up to Damascus to ensure these ex-SNA factions no longer abuse or exploit Kurdish communities.

—Gregory Waters

There were no reports of large-scale violations by government security forces during the fighting in the Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiye neighborhoods, unlike the abuses that occurred in coastal areas or in Swaida last year. This demonstrates progress in managing security operations in areas where diverse communities live. Another episode of violence and killings would be too costly politically for Damascus. In Aleppo, security forces have been overall mindful to show that they are able to protect the Kurdish community.

—Marie Forestier is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. She is also currently a consultant for the European Institute of Peace.

Related reading

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5. What does the Aleppo violence imply for future negotiations with other armed groups?

The issue in Aleppo is distinct from more general political or ideological dissent in Syria because it involved an armed group that controls territory. However, the government’s slower, methodical approach to the dispute this week, mixing continued diplomatic outreach with military pressure, shows a more mature leadership in Damascus compared to how it approached similar dissent in Swaida in July.

—Gregory Waters

Related reading

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Jul 22, 2025

Why the violence in my hometown, Swaida, goes beyond ‘rivalry.’

By Majd AlGhatrif

US officials described the events as “a rivalry” between Syria’s Druze and Bedouins. But this framing strips the crisis of its historical and political context.

Civil Society Conflict

The operation in Aleppo was not a response to dissent, but rather a consequence of the deadlock of negotiations. A significant part of the Syrian population would like to see Kurds and the northeastern region fully integrated into the new Syria. The positive outcome of the military operation in Aleppo—at least from the government’s perspective—and the way security forces managed it raise the question of a possible replication of a similar operation in other areas in the northeast.

—Marie Forestier

6. How does the confrontation fit into the broader Turkish-Israeli rivalry over Syria?

Israel and Turkey hold fundamentally opposing views on Syria. Ankara sees the evolving situation as an opportunity to promote stability through a strong and centralized Syrian state, while Israel views such an outcome as a strategic threat and prefers a weak and fragmented Syria. 

During the clashes in Aleppo city, both countries once again positioned themselves on opposite sides. The intensity and limited duration of the fighting did not allow for direct or indirect intervention by either actor. Nevertheless, Turkey publicly signaled its readiness to support the Syrian army if requested, while Israel called on the international community to protect the Kurds. This contrast underscores Turkey’s greater capacity to intervene in northern Syria, as well as the constraints on Israel’s options. 

In light of the outcome in Aleppo city, Turkey’s vision of a unified Syria appears to have scored a tactical victory. At the same time, the episode served as a reminder that Turkish-Israeli competition over Syria—rooted in irreconcilable strategic perspectives—will persist.

—Ömer Özkizilcik 

7. Where does the United States stand in all of this?

The escalation highlights two key realities for US policy in Syria. First, US mediation efforts aimed at facilitating integration and supporting a unified Syrian state have failed. Washington repeatedly brought Damascus and the SDF to the negotiating table and attempted to steer the process in a constructive direction, yet no breakthrough was achieved. 

Second, the crisis has created a new opportunity for the United States. The exposure of the SDF’s fragility in Aleppo city may increase its willingness to make concessions and accept Damascus’s terms. If Washington seeks to prevent a broader military escalation in northeastern Syria, it can once again convene talks and press the SDF to adopt a more pragmatic stance. Should the SDF demonstrate genuine willingness, the United States could play a constructive role in facilitating integration and rebuilding trust between the parties.

—Ömer Özkizilcik

Related reading

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Nov 21, 2025

Syria joining the anti-ISIS coalition is a westward pivot—with opportunities and risks

By Merissa Khurma and Giorgio Cafiero

The decision is a shift in the country’s alignment—from Russian and Iranian spheres of influence to one in NATO and GCC regional orbits.

Democratic Transitions Middle East

8. Did disagreements among SDF factions contribute to the violence?

The exact degree of internal disagreement within the SDF—and the extent of central command control over Asayish forces in Aleppo—remains contested. Nonetheless, it is evident that multiple decision-making centers are involved. Following the escalation, Damascus and the SDF agreed, under international mediation, to evacuate all Asayish forces from the contested neighborhoods. Some Asayish units, however, refused to comply and instead chose to fight. 

According to Turkish intelligence sources cited in the media, this decision followed orders issued by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) cadres in Qandil, reportedly led by Bahoz Erdal. This suggests a rift between the Syrian branch of the PKK, which dominates the SDF, and the PKK’s central leadership in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq. 

A second layer of fragmentation became visible on the battlefield itself. While the Syrian army initially pursued a limited operation, cohesion within the Asayish ranks collapsed, with many fighters deserting or laying down their weapons.

—Ömer Özkizilcik

The post Eight questions (and expert answers) on the SDF’s withdrawal from Syria’s Aleppo appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In addition to hosting Oreshnik missiles, Belarus has also recently been accused of aiding Russian drone attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed on December 26 that Russian drone units are using Belarusian territory to penetrate Ukraine’s air defense network and strike targets across the country. “We note that the Russians are trying to bypass our defensive interceptor positions through Belarus. This is risky for Belarus,” Zelenskyy commented. “It ⁠is unfortunate that Belarus is ‌surrendering its sovereignty in favor of Russia’s aggressive ambitions.”

Meanwhile, Russia is reportedly building a major ammunition plant in Belarus to help supply the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Construction is said to be underway close to Belarusian capital Minsk, according to opposition group BELPOL, comprised of former members of the Belarusian security services. Responding to news of the plant, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya accused Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka of “dragging Belarus deeper into Russia’s war.”

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.

Evidence of Belarusian involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine is not new, of course. On the eve of the invasion, Lukashenka allowed Putin to station tens of thousands of Russian troops in Belarus. The country then served as the main gateway and logistics hub for Russia’s blitzkrieg offensive to seize Kyiv in spring 2022. The Lukashenka regime is also implicated in the Kremlin campaign to abduct and indoctrinate thousands of Ukrainian children.

Reports of Lukashenka’s ongoing involvement in the Russian war effort come amid speculation of a potential thaw in diplomatic relations between Belarus and the United States. In December, 123 political prisoners were freed by the Belarusian authorities, with the US easing sanctions measures in exchange. This followed two smaller scale trade-offs earlier in 2025 as the Trump administration seeks to increase diplomatic dialogue with Minsk as part of ongoing efforts to broker a negotiated settlement to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Despite these headline-grabbing humanitarian steps, there is little sign of a more comprehensive shift in Minsk away from domestic repression or any reduction in support for Russia’s aggressive foreign policy agenda. On the contrary, the available evidence indicates that while Lukashenka may seek increased engagement with the West, he has no intention of turning away from Moscow or ending human rights abuses inside Belarus.

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By continuing to provide Moscow with its full backing, Belarus enhances Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine. This is undermining the Trump administration’s efforts to end the Russian invasion and secure a lasting peace settlement. Belarus also remains deeply implicated in Putin’s hybrid war against Europe and stands accused of weaponizing everything from migrants to balloons against its EU neighbors.

US outreach to Minsk over the past year has secured the release of many prominent prisoners, but continued arrests mean that the overall number of political detainees in the country remains high. Naturally, Lukashenka is happy to reengage with American officials in order to secure a relaxation of sanctions pressure, but there are also concerns that the current approach risks incentivizing hostage-taking.

Yes, a less isolated and more neighborly Belarus remains a worthwhile goal, but in the current circumstances, Lukashenka has little motivation to compromise. He is looking at possible gains without actually reducing the current level of repression in Belarus.

Sanctions relief would be a significant gain for Lukashenka. In exchange for that, the US should be able to achieve some limits on Belarusian facilitation of Kremlin aggression in Ukraine or, at a minimum, a notable decrease in the number of political prisoners in Belarus.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

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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.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Belarus hosts nuclear-capable Russian missiles despite talk of US thaw appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Hordiienko’s death was part of a broader Kremlin campaign to methodically target and destroy Ukraine’s agricultural industry. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, at least fifteen farmers have been killed in the Kherson region alone.

Meanwhile, vast quantities of farmland remain inaccessible due to mining or have sustained damage as a result of fires caused by Russian military actions. Ukrainian agricultural workers face a daily threat of drone, artillery, or missile strikes. Some farmers have responded to the danger by taking measures to defend themselves, their land, and their livestock, such as investing in drone monitoring equipment and hiring military veterans.

Over the past year, Russian attacks on Ukraine’s agricultural sector have escalated alarmingly. According to research conducted by the University of Strasbourg, the University of Maryland, and NASA’s Harvest program, the number of farmland fires identified in Ukrainian-controlled areas of the Kherson region during 2025 rose by 87.5 percent.

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.

The Kherson farming community’s wartime experience is mirrored throughout Ukraine, particularly in areas close to the front lines of the invasion. By attacking agricultural infrastructure, Russia seeks to undermine Ukraine’s food security, just as it targets the country’s energy infrastructure to deprive Ukraine’s civilian population of access to electricity and heating.

The implications of Russia’s war on Ukrainian farmers are international in scope. Known historically as the breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine is home to around one quarter of the world’s black soil, the most fertile farmland on the planet. This makes Ukraine a potential agricultural superpower and a key contributor to global food security. Ukrainian farmers are among the leading exporters of foodstuffs to the European Union, with Ukrainian produce also playing a prominent role in aid programs to counter hunger throughout the developing world.

Russia’s invasion has had a devastating impact on Ukrainian agricultural output. In addition to mined fields, burned crops, and bombed facilities, large numbers of Ukrainian farms are currently in Kremlin-controlled regions, leading to seized harvests.

Kherson region farmers received a further blow in summer 2023 when a suspected Russian sabotage operation destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. This act of ecocide undermined one of Europe’s largest irrigation systems, leaving hundreds of thousands of hectares without access to water. The impact on the environment was catastrophic, leading to drought conditions, failed crops, and the loss of farmland.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

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Despite the unprecedented challenges posed by Russia’s ongoing invasion, Kherson’s farmers continue to work. In 2025, they managed to harvest a remarkable quantity of the watermelons that serve as the region’s unofficial calling card. Other key Kherson crops include wheat and potatoes.

Since 2022, domestic and international support programs have proved instrumental in bolstering the resilience of the Kherson agricultural industry. Initiatives in recent years have included subsidies for farmers and technical assistance focused on areas such as irrigation, with the goal of helping farmers adapt to the new wartime realities.

Kherson agricultural businesses are also responding to the changing conditions. Due to water scarcity and rising temperatures, some farms have reduced planting areas and turned to cultivating crops that utilize soil moisture more efficiently. Research is also underway to develop additional drought-resistant crops better suited to the current environment.

Further international support for Ukrainian farmers will be critically important during 2026. Ukraine’s agricultural industry is one of the cornerstones of the national economy and a major exporter to global markets. By targeting farmers and their land, Russia aims to make Ukraine unlivable and break the country’s resistance. This strategy poses a significant threat to international food security and must be addressed.

Oleksandr Tolokonnikov is Deputy Head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration.

Further reading

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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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Russia’s war on Ukrainian farmers threatens global food security appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Although the protests are inspiring and potentially historic, some of the developments are being overshadowed by the United States. On January 2 (and again two days later), US President Donald Trump issued an unspecified threat to the regime not to use further violence against its citizens. It is admirable that the Trump administration is focusing attention on the Iranian people, but it is also inconsistent with the administration’s past decisions to cut funds for vital internet circumvention services in Iran and avoid speaking out against the regime’s human rights violations.

The United States should not miss this opportunity to reaffirm support for the Iranian people as a centerpiece of a more comprehensive approach to its Iran policy. With this context in mind, and drawing on our past experiences serving in various capacities for the US government working on Iran—including during the Mahsa Amini protests—we authors suggest a few key policy recommendations.

Recommendations for the United States and its partners

1. Pause all major non-protest-related policy initiatives. Now is not the time for renewed nuclear negotiations or military strikes. The Biden administration famously paused negotiations about resuming the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action during the protests in response Mahsa Amini’s death. This does not mean diplomacy is dead, but any hypothetical nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran need to be postponed indefinitely. This is also not the time for Israel (or the United States) to restart military attacks. The Iranian people deserve the time and space to see these protests through. In June, the Iranian government benefited from an ill-conceived Israeli strike on Evin prison that attempted to liberate, but ended up killing, a number of prisoners. It is vital to not give the government a similar propaganda victory. 
2. The US government should designate a new Iran envoy. The Trump administration should immediately name or designate an envoy or senior official to engage with the Iranian diaspora and to more broadly focus on all aspects of Iran policy full-time. Regular engagement with this community and other Iran-focused government and nongovernment contacts is important to emphasize that the administration is serious about the Iranian people. This individual would not replace US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff but would report to him and other senior officials who remain focused on wider-ranging issues. Full-time attention on the portfolio would also help provide an internal advocate within an administration focused on budget cuts for low-cost, high-reward spending to advance a broader Iran policy, such as internet circumvention funding.
3. Partner governments should fund Iran initiatives that the administration ended. At the height of the Mahsa Amini protests, thirty million Iranians used US-funded circumvention services. Some of these services are being temporarily funded by private enterprises. Over the long-term, they require consistent support from a government entity. The same is also true of the Iran human rights programs that the current administration proposed cutting in its entirety in the Congressional Budget Justification. If the administration does not reconsider its cuts, other foreign governments would have an opportunity to pick up the technical and moral leadership that the United States has relinquished.
4. The international community should unite in backing the Iranian people. We authors have heard directly from Iranians who participated in past protests that a unified signal from the international community not only helped buoy sentiment within the movement but also served as a deterrent against human rights abuses by the regime. For instance, Iran significantly decreased its executions of drug offenders following sustained international pressure. Joint statements, including those issued by the Group of Seven and United Nations, have the best chance of impacting Iranian behavior. 
5. Create a nimble emergency funding mechanism. During the Mahsa Amini protests, several Iranian advocacy groups suggested to us that there was need for urgent funding, and they proposed possible emergency initiatives such as setting up funds to help pay striking workers living wages. Although we supported these ideas, the Biden administration was not nimble enough to fully evaluate and fund them in a timely manner. The United States or other partner nations should consider establishing a fund or program to explicitly facilitate crisis response operations. If the United States is unable or unwilling to fund it, the Treasury Department should, at a minimum, issue (or reissue) guidance to allow private individuals and organizations quick and legal ways to send money to protestors.
6. Increase human rights sanctions. The United States and partner governments should move quickly to issue targeted sanctions against human rights abusers and those involved in the crackdown against protestors. The 2024 bipartisan MAHSA Act provides the Treasury and State Department with new sanction authorities. To date, not a single designation has been imposed under this authority. Implementing MAHSA sanctions now—ideally in coordination with actions from our foreign partners—would send a symbolic, but powerful, message that the international community condemns Iran’s crackdown on protestors. 

Recommendations for nongovernmental actors

1. Minimize partisan politics. Iran policy has long been a victim of brutal partisan politics in Washington. Support for the Iranian people should be an approach that both parties should be able to get behind, as it aligns with US interests and values.  
2. More constructive engagement with the diaspora. As admittedly non-Iranian Americans involved in Iran policy, we authors will never fully understand the intricacies of the diaspora. From our past experiences, the online and in-person abuse directed at other members of the diaspora and at proposed policies limited government-diaspora engagement, and hindered the diaspora’s ability to effectively advocate for policy changes.
3. Provide clear and tangible recommendations. During the Biden administration, then-Vice President Kamala Harris led efforts to support the Iranian people’s call for the regime to be removed from the UN Commission on the Status of Women. This was a direct result of lobbying by civil society. Once the Harris team had a clear recommendation and knew it aligned with US policy priorities and values, the United States successfully led the campaign to remove Iran from the Commission.

A final recommendation for everyone: Keep the focus on Iran

The Iranian people themselves are bravely leading the current protests. It is essential to keep the focus on them, rather than on Washington politics and social media, to ensure the Iranian people get the support they need at this critical juncture.

Abram Paley is an incoming nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He most recently served as acting special envoy for Iran from 2023 to 2025 and, before that, Middle East advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Nate Swanson is a resident senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council. He most recently served as director for Iran at the National Security Council in the Biden White House and a member of the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team.

The post As Iran protests continue, policymakers should apply these key lessons appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• The ongoing protests in Iran demonstrate the Iranian people’s courage, tenacity, and yearning for freedom. The protests also expose the Iranian government’s inability to meet the economic, social, and political demands of its people.
• It is not possible to predict how the ongoing protests will end, but the status quo in Iran is not sustainable.
• Protest size in Tehran, the development of a viable alternative, and regimes fissures will be key indicators to watch in determining the trajectory and effectiveness of the demonstrations.

WASHINGTON—The Iranian regime appears to be at its weakest point in its nearly half century in power. For the past two weeks, Iranians throughout the country have taken to the streets in protest over Iran’s deepening economic crises, stirring up memories of the Mahsa Amini protests of 2022-2023 and the Green Movement demonstrations of 2009-2010. This is compounded by a record level of inflation, a potentially existential water crisis, and an open admission from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that his government is incapable of meeting the needs of its own people. Moreover, these protests follow a series of strategic setbacks for the regime, including Israel’s near destruction of Iran’s foreign proxies, the Assad regime’s fall in Syria in December 2024, and the devastation of the twelve-day war in June 2025. 

Yet, this confluence of factors has been partially overshadowed by US President Donald Trump and his increasingly interventionist administration. Trump’s social media post on January 2 offering lethal protection to Iranian protesters if the regime cracked down on them was shocking even before this week’s events in Venezuela. Although I initially saw Trump’s post as a rhetorical and cost-free gesture, it cannot be dismissed entirely considering that the Trump administration was willing to attack Venezuela and arrest former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro earlier this month. Indeed, Trump’s threat could increase turnout at the protests. In theory, hesitant Iranians might be more likely to protest if they might have some form of US support. 

As the protests continue, it is worth following several important indicators that may determine how they differ from past mass movements in Iran, what trajectory they may take, and what they might mean for the Islamic Republic’s future.

Mass protests are, of course, not new in Iran. They have played a critical role in shaping Iran’s modern political landscape, helping to bring the current regime to power in 1979 and consolidate its rule. In the 1990s, protests evolved to challenge the regime’s governance. The 1999 student protests and the 2009 Green Movement primarily focused on regime reform, with the latter adopting the slogan “Where is my vote?” Since the December 2019 Bloody Aban uprising, which began following an increase in fuel prices, there has been a significant shift in the tone and objective of protests. Initially sparked by social or economic issues, mass protests in Iran have morphed into broader and prolonged anti-regime demonstrations, with protesters increasingly chanting “Death to Khamenei!” 

Here is what to watch as the current protests unfold:

1. The size of the protests in Tehran

The 2009 Green Movement protests challenged the rigged presidential election and, for the first time in Iran, used social media to draw millions to the street, mainly in Tehran. Iran ultimately employed brutal repression and detained opposition leaders to quell the movement. Subsequent protests have had a wider geographic scope and more aggressive platform—revolution, not reform—but have not drawn the same volume of people to the streets. Absent massive, sustained protests in Tehran, it is difficult to envision the regime falling or making major changes.

2. Opposition unity and a viable alternative

There is no elected leader that the opposition fully supports who could take power immediately after a potential transition. Perhaps the imprisoned former official Mostafa Tajzadeh or the deposed Shah’s eldest son, Reza Pahlavi, could become a transitional leader following the fall of the current government. Pahlavi has a devoted following among certain segments of the diaspora and appears to have name recognition inside Iran, given some videos coming out of the country. However, he is also a controversial figure, and his supporters were partially blamed for sabotaging attempts to unify the Iranian diaspora opposition in 2022. Infighting within the Iranian diaspora has continued during this round of protests, but one interesting development is the near-unanimous perspective from social media that Iran will never be the same. Maybe that is progress.

Nonetheless, the lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran. There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labor leader Lech Wałęsa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted, and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders. 

3. Regime fissures (and defections)

Iran has done a masterful job maintaining regime unity and avoiding high-profile defections. Regime survival is always the paramount consideration, perhaps partially because the country’s leaders don’t have anywhere to go. Russia would likely harbor certain elites, as it took in Bashar al-Assad after his flight from Syria. But the mid-level security officials implementing the crackdown would have no safe refuge. This is why the work my Atlantic Council colleagues at the Strategic Litigation Project are doing is so important. Exposing and holding officials responsible for crackdowns raises the costs of individual actions. This may contribute to additional regime fissures and security defections in this round of protests.

All of this is to say that despite working on Iran policy for nearly twenty years, it is not possible to predict how the ongoing protests will end. I see the same images and reports as everyone else, and I can ask individual Iranians for their assessment. But I don’t know whether this is the protest that brings down the regime, or whether the Islamic Republic will be able to successfully repress these protests as it has done before.

Regardless, the protests are important. They once again demonstrate the Iranian people’s courage, tenacity, and yearning for freedom. The protests also expose the Iranian government’s inability to meet the economic, social, and political demands of its people. They are a clear directive sent up from the streets and heard around the world that the status quo in Iran is not sustainable.

The post What to watch as anti-regime protests engulf Iran appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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On September 9th, 2025, Global China Hub Assistant Director Caroline Costello published an op-ed in Foreign Policy about China’s role in fueling illegal logging in Africa.

The post Caroline Costello in Foreign Policy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

• Executive summary
• Introduction
• A comprehensive approach to defense and resilience
• Key pillars of Latvian resilience
• Challenges and future imperatives for resilience
• Annex 1: Management structure
• Annex 2: Framework of concepts, plans, laws, and regulations

Executive summary

Latvia has significantly evolved its defense and security policy, focusing on national resilience as a cornerstone of its statehood, as analyzed in LVARes: The Evolution of Latvia’s Defense and Security Policy in Resilience Building, a project of the Centre for East European Policy Studies and the Atlantic Council. This transformation is anchored in Latvia’s Comprehensive National Defense (CND) framework, a whole-of-society strategy that integrates civilian, military, and private-sector efforts to deter aggression and manage crises. Key to this approach are legal underpinnings from evolving state defense concepts and amendments to foundational laws like the National Security Law.

Pillars of this resilience include ensuring the continuity of essential services and critical infrastructure, with a shift from mere asset protection to guaranteeing operational functionality through public-private partnerships and an enhanced role for municipalities. Regular exercises like Namejs and Pilskalns test these preparations.

To counter hybrid threats, Latvia formally recognizes the information space as a defense domain, implementing multilayered strategies that combine government-led strategic communications, support for independent media, civil-society engagement against disinformation, and international cooperation, notably through hosting the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence. Societal resilience is further boosted by public-preparedness campaigns like “72 Hours: What to do in case of a crisis,” media literacy programs, and integrating national defense education, including psychological defense and nonviolent civil resistance, into curricula.

Significant reforms are modernizing Latvia’s crisis management, with the planned National Crisis Management Center (CMC) under the prime minister, centralizing coordination and decision-making. Civil-protection measures are strengthening as well, with new legislation for public shelters and updates to the State Civil Protection Plan.

International cooperation is indispensable, with NATO providing collective defense, the EU offering funding and policy coordination, and robust bilateral ties with the United States and regional cooperation with Baltic and Nordic partners. The LVARes project itself exemplifies Latvia’s proactive international engagement in studying national capabilities, raising awareness, and sharing best practices.

Challenges persist, including resource constraints, interagency coordination complexities, evolving threats, and the need to bolster societal cohesion. Future imperatives involve fully operationalizing the CMC, implementing the shelter program, sustained investment in capabilities, and deeper public engagement in CND. Strategic recommendations for policymakers emphasize CMC effectiveness, civil-protection investments, public-private partnerships, psychological resilience, volunteer engagement, and integrating nonviolent resistance. For international partners, continued support for Latvian capability development, amplifying LVARes findings, facilitating resilience benchmarking, and supporting cross-border exercises are crucial. Through these efforts, Latvia fortifies its security and contributes valuable lessons to the Euro-Atlantic community.

Introduction

The contemporary security environment is characterized by an array of complex and interconnected threats. These range from the potential for conventional military aggression to the more pervasive and persistent challenges of hybrid warfare, sophisticated information operations, and malicious cyber activities. Russia’s aggressive foreign policy and its full-scale war against Ukraine have significantly amplified these threats, underscoring the vulnerability of states in the region and the urgent need for robust national preparedness. Latvia’s position as a frontline state of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), sharing a direct border with the Russian Federation, has inherently shaped its national security posture and necessitated a continuous adaptation of its defense strategies, pushing for an essential shift in Latvia’s defense thinking.

The traditional focus on military defense, while still fundamental, is increasingly understood as insufficient on its own. Consequently, Latvia has progressively embraced a broader concept of national resilience encompassing not only military strength but also the resilience of its society, the continuity of government and essential services during crises, the protection of critical infrastructure, and the cultivation of psychological defense among its populace. This evolution reflects a growing understanding that national security in the twenty-first century is a whole-of-society endeavor.

Latvia’s pursuit of national resilience is not confined to a single strategy but is realized through a multifaceted approach that addresses various dimensions of security. These include ensuring the operational continuity of essential services and the resilience of critical infrastructure, actively countering hybrid threats in the information and cyber domains, fostering broad societal resilience through public preparedness and education, and acknowledging the potential role of nonviolent civil resistance. The aim of this report is to systematically analyze the evolution in Latvia’s defense and security policy, particularly its implementation of a comprehensive national defense framework, and to share the insights and lessons learned with allies, partners, and the broader public to enhance collective security in the Euro-Atlantic region.

A comprehensive approach to defense and resilience

Latvia’s approach to national defense has undergone a significant evolution, moving from a primary focus on conventional military capabilities and professional military service orientation toward a more encompassing strategy known as Comprehensive National Defense (CND). Adopted in 2018, the CND system is designed to ensure security and crisis preparedness across all sectors of the state and society, thereby enhancing Latvia’s overall deterrence posture and its resilience against armed conflicts or a wide spectrum of potential crises. The overarching aims of CND are the following:

• Preparing the Latvian population to actively participate in the defense of their country. 
• Facilitating efficient and effective crisis management at the national level. 
• Ensuring the continuity and support of critical state functions, including government operations, energy supply, healthcare, and logistics, even under duress. 

A fundamental and defining characteristic of Latvia’s CND is its “whole-of-society” approach, which recognizes that national defense and resilience are not the sole responsibility of the armed forces or government ministries but require the active involvement and cooperation of every element of society. This comprehensive vision entails the systematic integration of municipalities, the owners and managers of both public and private critical infrastructure (spanning sectors such as energy, communications, finance, and healthcare), nongovernmental organizations, the broader business community, and individual citizens into national defense planning and preparedness efforts. 

A significant emphasis within this approach is placed on building and nurturing mutual trust and robust partnerships between public authorities at all levels and private-sector entities. These collaborative efforts are seen as essential for creating a networked civil and military defense system where each component is prepared and able to work in sync. The success of the CND model hinges on the ability to overcome traditional challenges and foster a shared sense of responsibility for national security.

The whole-of-society approach is further strengthened through the way the CND is managed and its legal basis, both of which are designed as a multitiered framework to ensure a whole-of-government and -societal approach to national resilience. The management structure (detailed in Annex 1) integrates political leadership, ministerial responsibilities, operational agencies, local governments, and societal actors to prepare for and respond effectively to a diverse spectrum of threats, ranging from military aggression to civil emergencies. Whereas the framework of strategic concepts, national plans, legal acts, and supporting regulations (a detailed list provided in Annex 2) ensure that CND is not merely a theoretical construct but a systematically planned and implemented national effort. Strategic concepts like the National Security Concept and the State Defense Concept, both approved by the parliament, articulate Latvia’s high-level strategic assessments, goals, and priorities in response to the evolving security environment, providing the overarching vision and direction for the development of the CND.

This approach also aligns with the direction set by NATO at its 2016 Warsaw Summit, where the Alliance adopted seven baseline requirements for national resilience. For the first time, NATO established clear conditions that member states’ civilian institutions must meet to support Article 4 and 5 military operations. These requirements include: continuity of government and critical services; resilient energy, food, and water supplies; the ability to manage uncontrolled population movements; resilient civil communication and transportation systems; and the capacity to handle mass casualties. In this regard, Latvia’s CND system goes beyond these NATO requirements by also incorporating societal resilience and the involvement of the private sector in defense operations and other aspects.

Alongside NATO’s framework, relevant EU-level initiatives provide significant complementary support for resilience. These include the EU’s crisis-management framework, particularly its Civil Protection Mechanism, and the Military Mobility initiative, which supports development of civilian infrastructure to facilitate the rapid movement of military forces across Europe. These efforts directly reinforce both NATO and national resilience objectives, providing practical tools and funding to enhance collective defense.

Beyond multilateral alliances, Latvia cultivates strong bilateral partnerships and engages actively in regional cooperation formats to enhance its security and resilience. The 2020 State Defense Concept emphasizes the strong military cooperation between Latvia and the United States, highlighting the long-standing and highly valued partnership between the Latvian National Armed Forces and the Michigan National Guard. The United States is widely regarded as a major strategic partner for Latvia’s security and independence.

The three Baltic states also work closely together to develop their collective security and defense capabilities. This cooperation includes joint efforts to strengthen their external borders, deepen collaboration in civil protection and crisis management, combat disinformation through shared intelligence and strategies, and enhance overall societal resilience. Joint military exercises are also a regular feature of this trilateral cooperation.

Nordic-Baltic cooperation provides another layer of security collaboration. Latvia’s comprehensive defense approach shares many similarities with the strategies adopted by Nordic countries, facilitating mutual learning and coordinated efforts. The Nordic and Baltic countries have also demonstrated solidarity through joint statements and coordinated actions, for example, in reaffirming their support for Ukraine.

Latvia’s multifaceted international engagement—spanning NATO, the EU, key bilateral relationships such as with the United States, and intensive regional cooperation—is not merely about receiving security assistance or aligning with external frameworks. It increasingly reflects a strategy of proactive contribution. As a frontline state that has rapidly developed its resilience concepts and capabilities in response to direct and evolving threats, Latvia is well-positioned to share valuable expertise and lessons learned.

Key pillars of Latvian resilience

Since the adoption of CND, Latvia has pursued a comprehensive approach to defense based on an understanding that every element of the government and population plays a part in creating a networked civil and military defense system—and recent lessons from Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression have further reinforced this understanding. This approach grew out of necessity: Latvia, a small country with limited strategic depth, neighbors Russia, a large, aggressive military power that has attacked countries in its so-called near abroad. Latvia’s approach, like those of its fellow Nordic-Baltic countries, is built on a straightforward idea that the country’s civil and military defense systems can achieve a greater deterrence and defense impact if they collaborate and if each part is prepared. Meanwhile, Latvia’s pursuit of national resilience is not confined to a single strategy but is realized through a multifaceted approach that addresses various dimensions of security. 

While the CND concept encompasses eight dimensions, ranging from military development to psychological resilience, our report examines it through four perspectives: military, civil, societal, and governmental resilience. This approach allows for a cohesive, strategic evaluation of the dimensions of readiness without sacrificing the scope of the original concept.

Military resilience

Latvia’s military resilience is a central aspect of its national defense, resting on the fundamental pillars of domestic responsibility for developing its own capabilities and a robust collective defense provided by its allies.

Lessons learned from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine since 2014 have driven initiatives to ensure that Latvian institutions and society can respond effectively to any unconventional or hybrid threat scenarios. Changes to the National Security Law have empowered the National Armed Forces (NAF), from the lowest level up, with the authority to respond to any military threat, conventional or unconventional, even without immediate orders from the political leadership. The law explicitly states that armed resistance may not be prohibited in times of war or occupation and affirms that every citizen has the right to take up arms to resist an aggressor. This legal framework solidifies the principle of total defense, ensuring that the entire nation is prepared and authorized to contribute to the defense of the country.

To maintain this posture, Latvia has steadily increased its defense budget. By 2018, Latvia had met the NATO defense spending goal of 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which has significantly contributed to the development of military capabilities, including within the National Guard. Military resolve is evident in the budget’s rapid growth, which is projected to reach approximately 3.65 percent of GDP in 2025, with announcements indicating a further increase to 5 percent by 2026. This funding is crucial for keeping military modernization on track through the strategic procurement of advanced weapon systems. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Latvia has significantly increased investment in conventional war-fighting capabilities to enhance its deterrence posture. The commitment to acquiring advanced systems—such as High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, IRIS-T air defense systems, and coastal defense missiles—sends a vital message that the country is serious about bolstering its defense. National resilience also necessitates forging a cohesive fighting force from diverse sources of manpower. Latvia is proactively addressing manpower challenges, most notably through the reintroduction of mandatory conscription in the form of the State Defense Service (SDS). Introduced in 2023, the SDS aims to increase recruitment and build a larger, well-trained reserve force. This policy of eleven-month mandatory service has shown early signs of success. Latvia plans to enlist four thousand new recruits annually by 2028 and, notably, 40 percent of the 2024 intake opted for professional careers after their mandatory service. Current military plans envision 31,000 troops by 2029, complemented by an equally large reserve contingent thereafter. However, this rapid expansion presents significant challenges. The primary obstacles include a lack of sufficient modern training infrastructure to accommodate the larger number of recruits, a shortage of qualified instructors to lead the training, and the immense organizational task of building a functional reserve system that can effectively manage and retrain thousands of new reservists annually after their active service ends. Successfully overcoming these hurdles is critical to ensuring the SDS translates into a genuine increase in combat-ready forces.

Advanced capabilities and increased manpower are only effective if they are maintained at a high state of readiness. This is achieved through a rigorous schedule of military exercises designed to test plans and ensure interoperability. The flagship event is the annual Comprehensive Defense Exercise “Namejs,” which tests the armed forces in joint operations at every level.

These exercises are crucial for more than just military units, serving as the primary mechanism for implementing the whole-of-society defense concept in practice. During Namejs, the NAF systematically drills its cooperation with the civilian sector. This includes collaborating with municipalities and state-owned companies to support military mobility and countermobility efforts, and working with private-sector entrepreneurs on resource mobilization. Similarly, through this whole-of-society approach, Latvia has demonstrated both ingenuity and cooperation. It is exemplified by efforts to formalize the roles of civilian groups in national defense, such as the involvement of hunters in the national defense system—a patriotic and armed segment of society that can be integrated with the National Guard and tasked with support assignments. As comprehensive defense evolves into a societal reality, it demonstrates credible national will, complicates adversary planning, and builds the societal backbone needed to withstand pressure and deter aggression, including hybrid attacks from Russia.

Civil resilience

Civil resilience in Latvia focuses on the comprehensive preparedness of its civilian structures and population, encompassing robust civil-defense planning across all government levels, from national ministries to local municipalities. This emphasis recognizes the critical role of municipalities in fostering a society-wide culture of preparedness and resilience.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine beginning in 2014 and 2022 deeply reverberated across Latvian society, creating significant momentum for action. The latter created public demand that pushed local governments beyond mere declaratory contingency plans to proactively explain preparedness strategies to their constituents. Latvia has adopted the necessary legislative basis that mandates that Latvian municipalities ensure the continuity of essential services during crises or war, therefore actively participating in developing a society-wide culture of preparedness and resilience.

Another key aspect of civil resilience involves ensuring the continuity of essential services and protecting critical infrastructure. Latvia has strategically shifted its crisis-management thinking from solely focusing on infrastructure protection to prioritizing the uninterrupted delivery of essential services and functions. While this shift presents additional planning challenges, it stems from the understanding that critical infrastructure cannot operate in isolation from broader national defense factors; it is rendered ineffective without skilled personnel, operational processes, and supporting services vital for its functioning. Businesses are consequently required to develop robust continuity plans.

The ability to ensure the flow of money for goods and services constitutes another critical service. Societal upheavals, crises, and wars often disrupt peacetime payment systems, as demonstrated by Ukraine’s experience. To address this, the Bank of Latvia (which is analogous to the US Federal Reserve) is developing crisis payment solutions, both cash and noncash, for a society with a high adoption rate for noncash transactions. For example, the Bank of Latvia is collaborating with major commercial banks to develop approved offline solutions, ensuring individuals can use their bank cards for basic necessities even if bank communications are down. Similarly, during a crisis or war, banks are required to maintain a predefined network of ATMs, with at least one ATM per municipal center, and have developed a map of critical ATMs that would operate in case of crisis.

Latvia also has proactively sought to improve the integrity of its communications systems. This involves ensuring that critical data—including sensitive healthcare, defense, security, and economic data—remains within Latvian territory and that critical information technology systems continue to function without interruption even if the connection to the global internet is disrupted. To achieve this, the government now mandates that national and municipal institutions, companies, and owners/managers of critical IT infrastructure prioritize using a single national internet exchange point, GLV-IX, a statewide and state-operated local internet ecosystem, for their data flows if the outer perimeter of electronic communications is compromised.

Finally, Latvia has actively addressed two common challenges in building preparedness: improving the communication of preparedness requirements and funding resilience efforts. Many national governments struggle with effectively communicating military crisis and war preparedness expectations to municipalities and private industries. While both disseminating information and issuing legislation are important, these efforts must be augmented by activities that encourage thoughtful planning, accurate understanding of requirements, and knowledge development. Indeed, Latvian municipalities have sometimes voiced concerns about insufficient resources for civil preparedness, arguing it should be a national responsibility. Similarly, even large, well-funded hospitals struggle to meet the three-month supply requirement for medicine and supplies, while smaller hospitals lack adequate funding altogether.

Latvia has sought to address these questions through legislative changes, clarifying responsibilities and tasks, and mandating regular exercises. Over time, continuous cooperation and the mandatory requirement of yearly exercises are expected to foster a better understanding of the overall defense system, individual roles within it, and mutual expectations among all parties involved. Regular exercise schedules significantly benefit Latvia’s preparedness across sectors by stress testing developed plans, building knowledge, and informing participants about potential organizational challenges during a military crisis or war. For example, the yearly state-wide comprehensive defense exercises Namejs involve municipalities, allied forces, and local companies playing out different scenarios alongside the National Armed Forces. On a local level, Pilskalns exercises, in use since 2020, test municipalities’ planning and practical response capabilities under wartime scenarios, involving national and local institutions, the NAF, and local companies. These exercises are crucial for stress testing plans, identifying gaps, and building practical experience among all involved parties. Ultimately, however, private enterprises are expected to fund their own preparedness planning and implementation activities.

Societal resilience

Societal resilience in Latvia is built on the principle that national security is a shared responsibility that extends to every citizen, empowering individuals with the practical knowledge and tools needed to withstand a crisis. The government has fostered a “culture of readiness” through regular information campaigns and hands-on materials that include tips to spot false information.

The most visible example of this is Latvia’s “72-hour preparedness guide,” a practical tool aimed at bolstering individual and, by extension, societal resilience. This campaign advises citizens on how to be self-sufficient for the first seventy-two hours of a crisis, a critical period before state emergency services may be able to provide widespread assistance. The booklet provides practical guidance on reliable information sources, identifying and countering disinformation, essential supplies to stock like water and food, preparing an emergency kit, and developing a family crisis action plan. This proactive approach is rooted in both general emergency-management principles and Latvia’s specific geopolitical and historical context. It not only promotes self-sufficiency that reduces the immediate burden on state resources, but also empowers citizens with concrete actions they can take, which reduces feelings of helplessness and fosters a sense of control and readiness. Public preparedness campaigns like this booklet encourage citizens to volunteer and self-organize, which are foundational elements for any form of collective resistance. The State Fire and Rescue Service (VUGD) plays a vital role in this public preparedness effort by actively informing the population on safety measures. To significantly enhance these capabilities, Latvia fully implemented a national cell broadcast system in early 2025. This modern alert system allows the VUGD to instantly send critical warnings directly to all mobile phones within a specific geographic area during an emergency, functioning without requiring users to install an application. This technology provides an immediate and widespread communication layer, complementing existing tools like sirens and the “112 Latvija” mobile application, which is also promoted by the VUGD as a key resource for emergency information.

These practical and educational efforts are underpinned by a broader national defense strategy that formally acknowledges psychological defense and nonviolent civil resistance as crucial components of CND. A noteworthy aspect of Latvia’s posture is the formal integration of nonviolent civil

resistance, where the 2020 State Defense Concept explicitly includes “nonviolent civil resistance against occupation forces” as a component of the societal dimension of “total defense.” This signifies a preparedness to resist aggression through a wide spectrum of means, not limited to armed conflict. This is, in large part, a direct response to Russia’s information manipulation and its treatment of the information space as a critical front. Securing an open media space and bolstering psychological resilience against manipulation is now a paramount security goal, involving the cultivation of critical thinking skills to withstand attempts to sow discord.  

To defend this front, Latvia employs a multilayered approach. The state has bolstered strategic communication resources, with a dedicated unit under the State Chancellery that coordinates messaging and works to disarm foreign malign information activities. Quality journalism is supported by funding and policy, and authorities have banned most of the Russian propaganda channels. In 2021, Latvia became the first Baltic state to prosecute individuals for willfully spreading dangerous falsehoods as per the criminal law, though there have been few convictions due to legal ambiguity in Article 231 around the definition of “fake news.” This state-led approach is complemented by a vibrant ecosystem of nongovernmental organizations, academics, and volunteers—such as the “Baltic elves”—who actively debunk falsehoods. Investigative journalists, fact-checkers, and initiatives like the Baltic Centre for Media Excellence also work to expose disinformation and promote high standards in journalism.

At the community level, these principles are put into practice through societal and municipality-led initiatives. Continuing work started in the previous year, the Riga municipality has organized a cycle of seven practical civil-defense seminars across various city neighborhoods. During the workshops, residents learn about specific risks in their area, such as nearby high-risk objects and evacuation routes, as identified by the Riga city municipality. They also receive practical training on how to: adapt a basement into a safe shelter; properly assemble a seventy-two-hour emergency bag; and build mental resilience with psychological self-help techniques.

To address the wider Russian threat to Western society, Latvia is sharing what it is learning with its allies and partners. It hosts NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, and it works with allies and partners to combat malign influence. Examples of this kind of cooperation are IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board), which conducts media training in the Baltic area, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which investigates disinformation and debunks narratives, educates media consumers, and has had staff based in Latvia since 2017.

Governmental resilience

Governmental resilience is the central pillar that ensures the state can continue to lead and function during a crisis, providing the necessary command, control, and coordination within the CND system. This is achieved through a robust legal framework, a clear institutional hierarchy, contingency and crisis-response planning, and a commitment to testing these plans through regular exercises to guarantee the continuity of government.

The crisis-management system of Latvia is multilayered. The State Civil Protection Plan clearly outlines the responsibilities and leading roles of all state institutions in case of state-level contingencies. The system is designed to be flexible; for example, the Ministry of Health has the leading role and responsibility for management of pandemics, as was the case with COVID-19, with all institutions (including the armed forces) supporting these efforts. Meanwhile, in the case of a military threat or war, civilian institutions have the role of supporting the armed forces and ensuring continuity of governance and essential services. At the practical level, the system envisions the establishment of the Civil Protection Operational Management Centre (abbreviated in Latvian as CAOVC), that is formed in case of state-level contingencies, including war. It would be led by the Ministry of the Interior and composed of delegated experts from across the government, tasking it with coordinating interinstitutional response, compiling a comprehensive situational picture, and providing support to the NAF.

This role is to be complemented by municipal-level responsibility through the establishment of municipal civil-protection commissions that are obliged to plan and execute response activities on a regional level, as well as coordinate with state-level efforts.

The “Kristaps” series involves the Cabinet of Ministers in simulating strategic decision-making, as well as NATO Crisis Management Exercises (CMX), while the operational comprehensive defense exercise Namejs includes tests of civil-military cooperation, the practical implementation of civil defense plans, and the coordination functions of the planned CAOVC.

Latvia’s current push to improve its crisis-management system and governmental resilience is a direct response to lessons learned from a series of major crises. The COVID-19 pandemic served as a stark, real-world test of cross-sectoral crisis management, exposing significant shortcomings in interministerial coordination, public communication, and the ability to manage state material reserves effectively. The 2021 hybrid attack and instrumentalization of migration organized by Belarus on the EU’s eastern border tested the state’s ability to coordinate a response between interior, defense, and foreign policy bodies under “gray zone” threat conditions that are, as another Atlantic Council report put it, diffuse and hard to attribute. Most significantly, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022 has provided an invaluable, albeit grim, case study in the requirements of modern national defense. It underscored the absolute necessity of a resilient government able to overcome the massive scale of civil-defense challenges and pervasive hybrid threats. These events collectively created a clear need for reevaluation and reform of the crisis-management system in Latvia, highlighting systemic challenges in achieving effective horizontal coordination across ministries.

To resolve these issues, Latvia is establishing a new centralized National Crisis Management Center (CMC). The concept for the CMC, approved by the government in early 2025, represents the keystone of the nation’s reformed resilience architecture. Its creation is a direct answer to the lessons learned from past crises, designed to provide the professional, permanent, and agile coordination that was previously lacking. Operating under the direct authority of the prime minister, the CMC is designed to provide a single, empowered hub for analysis, planning, and, crucially, to improve coordination in crisis management between key state institutions, especially in complex threat scenarios, and provide support to decision-makers and political leadership.

The core functions of the CMC will include: continuous monitoring of the situation and information gathering; identifying potential risks and threats; conducting analysis of information and data to assess these risks and threats; strategic planning and coordination of operational planning; coordinating the planning, logistics, and recovery of state-level civilian crisis-management resources, including state material reserves; and coordinating crisis-communication efforts. Meanwhile, in the specific context of a military crisis, the CMC will be responsible for coordinating the civilian sector’s response and ensuring seamless cooperation with the military sector.

In essence, this new structure, continuously validated through planning and exercises, aims to ensure the leadership and effective whole-of-government coordination deemed essential for navigating these complex security challenges.

Challenges and future imperatives for resilience

Latvia has been systematically working to integrate all societal elements into its national defense posture, particularly since 2014. This ongoing effort, while showing significant progress, presents a range of challenges and necessitates clear future developments to ensure sustained and enhanced security in a complex geopolitical landscape.

Latvia’s commendable strides in building a comprehensive national resilience model are met with several persistent and evolving challenges; therefore, for the continued evolution and strengthening of Latvian resilience it is crucial to address them in a timely manner:

1. Building and maintaining robust military defense capabilities. Maintaining momentum in military modernization programs and ensuring the capacity to sustain combat operations beyond an initial phase are crucial for credible deterrence and defense. This includes addressing the timeline for military buildup in relation to potential Russian force reconstitution. While Latvia’s defense spending is projected to reach 3.45 percent of GDP in 2025, with ambitions for 5 percent by 2026, efficient allocation across diverse needs—from military modernization to civil protection and societal programs—remains a complex undertaking. This financial strain also impacts critical infrastructure operators and municipalities tasked with new preparedness responsibilities. Therefore, continued investment in critical military capabilities, including air defense, coastal defense systems (like Naval Strike Missile systems), and long-range precision fires (HIMARS) should be pursued.
2. Expanding the National Armed Forces. Planned expansions of the NAF and the full implementation of the State Defense Service face manpower constraints, requiring substantial investment in training infrastructure, qualified instructors, and innovative recruitment policies. The current reserve system also requires significant overhaul. Latvia should continue the expansion of the NAF, overhaul the reserve system to effectively integrate SDS graduates, and implement both dedicated reservist training and early military education. Ensuring adequate infrastructure, qualified instructors, and innovative policies for recruitment and training is crucial.
3. Developing targeted strategies for critical areas. The development of industry-specific expertise for business and service continuity, particularly for critical infrastructure, can be a bottleneck. Cultivation of a deeper culture of shared responsibility with the private sector through targeted incentives, joint training programs, and secure information-sharing platforms should be continued. Additionally, mechanisms for improving intermunicipal coordination and resource sharing can alleviate the burden or strain associated with this issue. Latvia should also move beyond awareness campaigns to foster active participation, skill building, and a sense of ownership among the citizenry. Relatively low levels of public trust in certain state institutions can potentially hinder the full engagement of society in defense and resilience efforts. Actively integrating civilian agencies, businesses, and citizens into national resilience and defense planning through practical taskings and drills could help resolve this challenge. A primary challenge is also extending the intensity of preparedness from military threat scenarios to encompass nonmilitary crises across all civilian institutions. Intermunicipal coordination, particularly in resource sharing, needs strengthening. Consistent funding for new municipal responsibilities in civil defense is also a point of discussion, which the municipalities have on previous occasions cited as one of the reasons for their inability to build up civil defense capacities.
4. Interagency coordination and centralized leadership. Ensuring seamless collaboration and clear, consistent communication of preparedness requirements across all sectors and among numerous actors remains a continuous task. Latvia faces persistent interagency coordination complexities. While the spirit of comprehensive national defense promotes collaboration, the practicalities of aligning different ministries, agencies, and even different levels of government can be challenging. Each entity has its own priorities, budgets, and institutional cultures. The MoD, while a key actor, cannot guarantee or ensure the engagement and resource commitments of other ministries. Effective comprehensive national defense requires a process led by a centralized authority with the power to direct and synchronize efforts across government—ideally the prime minister’s office or a dedicated high-level body. This is especially true for distributing tasks effectively among ministries and bodies of equivalent hierarchical power. Therefore, the establishment of the new Crisis Management Center is a promising development that could further leadership in the implementation of comprehensive national defense and serve as a central actor for confronting crisis situations. However, its mandate, authority, and resourcing will be critical. It must be empowered to not just coordinate but also to direct and enforce; it also must avoid becoming yet another silo and instead act as a true hub for national crisis response and comprehensive national defense implementation. The assurance that the CMC is rapidly and effectively staffed, resourced, and empowered to coordinate across all government levels, municipalities, and the private sector is paramount. The CMC should also be tasked with leading institutionalized, regular, complex cross-sectoral crisis-management exercises. Engaging all nongovernmental organizations and local media more consistently in preparedness exercises and overcoming local political inertia are both ongoing efforts. Effective Comprehensive National Defense coordination across ministries, especially in horizontal tasking, presents difficulties. 
5. Countering evolving threats in the information landscape. Democratic countries like Latvia must counter influence within political, ethical, moral, and legal constraints, while adversaries often operate without such limits, giving them an advantage in proactive narrative projection. Latvia must continuously adapt its resilience strategies to counter new and evolving hybrid threats, sophisticated disinformation techniques, and novel cyberattack methods. Sustaining and enhancing programs to equip the population to withstand long-term information influence operations and maintain morale during crises is crucial. Further exploration and integration of nonviolent resistance concepts into national defense training and public guidance could promote the adaptability of resilience in this area. Latvia’s main approach to countering malign activities in the information space has been blocking narratives rather than proactively projecting its own strategic messages. A shift in policy is also needed from primarily blocking disinformation to more proactive narrative projection by developing and disseminating national strategic narratives that reinforce democratic values and societal cohesion. Expanding media literacy and critical thinking education is still an option; so, too, is allocating more support to independent and local media. Collaboration with allies on resilience benchmarking particularly for critical services, countering hybrid threats, and protecting critical infrastructure could bring about collective benefits in resilience building. 
6. Reviewing the conceptual framework of national defense. Latvia has made impressive progress in defining and implementing the CND concept. However, we believe that the evolution of its conceptual framework must continue to better adhere to the complexities of real-life challenges and diverse crisis situations. As time passes, a review of the initially laid out core principles is needed. A primary concern is preventing comprehensive national defense from becoming a catch-all concept. While its all-encompassing nature is a strength there is risk that its boundaries are too wide and therefore its core purpose can become diluted, leading to a diffusion of effort and resources. For instance, if every societal issue is framed as a comprehensive national defense matter, prioritization becomes difficult and the focus on core security and defense preparedness could be lost. Future work should aim to refine the operational scope of the comprehensive national defense, ensuring it remains a focused and effective framework while clearly delineating its relationship with broader societal well-being initiatives. We need to clearly define what falls within comprehensive national defense and what is supportive but distinct to maintain its strategic integrity. 
7. Deepening societal engagement and cohesion. Latvia should continue its efforts to make its comprehensive defense concept a nationwide reality not just a government policy on paper. As comprehensive defense evolves into a social reality, it demonstrates credible national will, complicates adversary planning, and builds the societal backbone needed to withstand pressure and deter aggression, including hybrid attacks from Russia. Although we have seen great examples of civil engagement from businesses in actively pursuing their role in the defense system, challenges remain with broad-based individual and community-level engagement. Latvia, for various historical and societal reasons, doesn’t always exhibit the strong deeply embedded community culture seen in some other nations. This can make reaching individuals and fostering grassroots resilience initiatives more challenging. Simply put, many individuals may not yet fully internalize their role or feel connected to a local preparedness network. Achieving genuine societal cohesion and developing the resilience of individuals within their respective communities must become a more pronounced strategic goal. This requires more than just information campaigns. It means investing in local leadership development, supporting community-based organizations, designing exercises that actively involve ordinary citizens in practical ways, and perhaps leveraging existing structures like schools, cultural centers, or even hobby groups to build networks of mutual support and preparedness. The aim should be to empower individuals and communities to self-mobilize for constructive action in crisis rather than relying solely on top-down directives.
8. Continued advocacy for enhanced support from NATO, the EU, the United States, and regional allies for Latvia’s capability development, military modernization, joint exercises, and resilience projects is crucial, as is maximizing the prepositioning of allied military equipment and stocks. The current strategic window, while Russian forces are degraded by the war in Ukraine, should be used to rapidly build up defense capacity and societal resilience, secure continued US commitment, generate a greater NATO forward presence, deepen regional integration, and refine reinforcement mechanisms. Other regional resilience priorities include transitioning the Baltic defense line from a concept to a concrete reality with fortified positions, leveraging natural terrain, and ensuring forces train to fight effectively from these prepared positions.

Editors: Armands Astukevičs, Elīna Vrobļevska.

Contributors: Mārcis Balodis, Hans Binnendijk, Marta Kepe, Beniamino Irdi.

Annex 1: Management structure

A. Strategy and policy level

President of Latvia and National Security Council (NSC): The president, as NAF supreme commander, chairs the NSC. The NSC, comprising top state officials and security heads, advises and coordinates on national security and defense, and offers recommendations to the Saeima (see below) and Cabinet.

Saeima (Parliament): Enacts national security, defense, and civil-protection laws; approves key strategic concepts (National Security Concept, State Defense Concept); and provides parliamentary oversight.

Key committees:

• National Security Committee: Prepares national security policy documents for Saeima approval.
  • Defense, Internal Affairs and Corruption Prevention Committee: Oversees relevant ministries, legislation, and budgets.
  • Comprehensive National Defense Subcommittee: Monitors government implementation of Comprehensive National Defense (CND) elements within the National Security and State Defense Concepts.
  • Other committees: May address specific CND implementation aspects as needed.

Cabinet of Ministers (CoM): The highest executive body, implementing national CND policy, approving strategic plans and regulations, allocating resources, and directing ministries.

Key bodies:

• Crisis Management Centre (CMC): Concept approval in early 2025; planned to be fully operational when legislation has been passed. Envisioned as the central, national crisis-management coordinator (monitoring, analysis, strategic planning. Its potential role in leading overall CND coordination is under active discussion.
  • Ministerial-Level Working Group for CND: Chaired by prime minister or lead minister. Ensures political alignment and high-level interministerial CND strategy coordination.

B. Planning and coordination level

State Secretary-Level Working Group for Comprehensive Defense (CND): Chaired by MoD state secretary. Coordinates CND plan development, harmonization, and monitoring across ministries at the senior-civil-servant level, translating Cabinet decisions into actionable plans.

Ministry of Defense (MoD): Lead institution for the State Defense Concept/Plan and CND concept development; responsible for military defense, NAF development, and civil-military cooperation planning.

Ministry of Interior (MoI): Lead institution for public order, internal security, and the State Civil Protection Plan; oversees the State Fire and Rescue Service (VUGD), State Police, and Border Guard; coordinates the Civil Defense Operational Management Centre.

Line ministries (e.g., health, transport, economy): Develop and implement sector-specific resilience plans and CND measures, ensuring continuity of essential services and participating in relevant working groups and exercises.

Bank of Latvia: Ensures financial-sector resilience, including payment systems and cash circulation, in cooperation with commercial banks.

C. Implementation and operations (state level):  

National Armed Forces Headquarters (NAF HQ): The NAF’s highest military headquarters and main operational command and control entity under the chief of defense; manages NAF operations, plans/executes joint operations (peacetime, crisis, war), and coordinates with civil authorities such as the Operational Control Centre of Civil Protection.

Operational Control Centre of Civil Protection: A state-level coordination body for major crises or military threats; integrates multiagency expert groups and works closely with NAF HQ to coordinate civil-military efforts.

State Fire and Rescue Service (VUGD): Primary state agency for firefighting, rescue operations, and practical civil-protection measures; implements elements of the State Civil Protection Plan.

Other key state agencies and services (e.g., Emergency Medical Service, State Police, Border Guard): Implement crisis response and resilience measures according to their mandates and plans, participating in exercises and interagency coordination.

Municipal and private-sector actors:

Civil Defense Commissions (thirty-seven at municipal level): Develop and implement local civil defense plans; coordinate local resources and crisis response (including public notification, evacuation, basic services, shelters); cooperate with regional NAF units and state services.

Private sector/critical infrastructure operators: Develop and implement business continuity plans for essential service resilience; cooperate with state and municipal authorities; may be involved in resource mobilization.  

Annex 2: Framework of concepts, plans, laws, and regulations

Armands Astukevičs is a researcher at the Center for East European Policy Studies in Riga, Latvia. Currently, he is working on his doctoral dissertation on authoritarian regime resilience. He has a master’s degree in political science from University of Latvia. Astukevičs’ previous work experience includes policy analysis and planning in the Latvian Ministry of Defense, where he focused on crisis management and comprehensive national defense issues. His current research interests relate to topics on the defense and security policy of the Baltic states, national resilience and resistance to hybrid threats, and analysis of Russia’s foreign policy processes.

Elīna Vrobļevska is a researcher and deputy director at the Center for East European Policy Studies in Riga, Latvia. She has a doctoral degree in international relations from Rīga Stradiņš University, with her thesis on “Russia’s foreign policy identity ideas and their manifestation in foreign policy (2012–2022).” Vroblevska serves as a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Rīga Stradiņš University. Her research interests include the analysis of Russia’s foreign policy narratives and their impact on political processes, the study of Russia’s foreign policy and the security challenges it poses, as well as the examination of Russia’s activities in the information space.

Mārcis Balodis is a researcher and a member of the board of the Center for East European Policy Studies. His primary research focuses on Russia’s foreing and security policy as well as Russia’s use of hybrid warfare.

Hans Binnendijk is a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, part of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Marta Kepe is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is also a senior defense analyst at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.

Beniamino Irdi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also the head of strategic and international affairs at Deloitte Legal Italy and founder and CEO of HighGround, a political risk consulting firm.

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Lessons from Latvia’s efforts to keep essential services running during a crisis

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The Transatlantic Security Initiative aims to reinforce the strong and resilient transatlantic relationship that is prepared to deter and defend, succeed in strategic competition, and harness emerging capabilities to address future threats and opportunities.

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The post The evolution of Latvia’s defense and security policy in resilience building appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Canadian government is making a “generational investment” in its infrastructure—including pipelines, ports, and roadways. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first federal budget, unveiled in early November 2025, establishes Canada’s long-term prosperity as a driver for this investment and enables the new government to approach linked global challenges from a place of strength. Canada’s budget process differs from the US budget process, producing a more concrete plan with less room for deviation once the budget is set. The Canadian government budget outlines actual revenue and the government’s expenditure plans. Indeed, infrastructure investments combine two priorities in the current threat landscape: economic ambition and military necessity. To achieve the stated goals of doubling Canadian exports to non-US markets over the next decade and meeting the new defense spending pledge to which NATO allies committed at the Hague summit, Canada’s new budget begins a major effort to have infrastructure catch up to ambition.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Canada’s Arctic, where infrastructure investment has sorely lagged. Canada’s vast and remote north is a challenging environment for building infrastructure. It is costly to build and to maintain, with prohibitively high initial costs and the “tyranny of distance” often deterring investment. Amid growing international interest in the Arctic, including pressure from the United States, Canada’s north can no longer be ignored, especially as Carney’s new nation-building agenda pushes for investment in infrastructure. Investing in Canada’s northern infrastructure addresses multiple necessities: It bolsters Canada’s military footprint in the Arctic; it contributes to NATO commitments on defense spending, particularly toward the goal of 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on infrastructure; it strengthens the economic opportunities available to communities in the region; and it improves access to critical minerals.  

The Canadian Arctic is facing a profound period of transformation. It is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the globe, dramatically impacting attempts to build infrastructure in the region. Permafrost thaw, less sea ice, and rising sea levels are all challenges facing Canada’s north. Ultimately, this reality needs to be central to the development of infrastructure projects in the region. Canada seeks to become a “clean energy superpower” by supporting the development of low-emission energy projects such as nuclear reactors and low-carbon liquefied natural gas. The government is pushing for the development of carbon capture and storage technologies, as well as enhanced methane regulations. It is also affirming its commitment to the industrial carbon tax. The new federal budget’s approval by parliament was only possible with support from the Green Party. The environment must remain central to Carney’s plans for economic and infrastructure expansion in order to maintain support for his minority government.

One highlight of the new budget is the Arctic Infrastructure Fund. The government is proposing C$1 billion over four years for Transport Canada to invest in “major transportation projects in the north,” including “airports, seaports, all-season roads, and highways.” These infrastructure investments have both civilian and military uses. The Mackenzie Valley Highway is a prime example of the challenges facing major infrastructure projects in the region. The all-weather highway extension is designed to connect remote communities in the Northwest Territories. While this project’s origins date back to the 1960s, it is still several years from breaking ground. The Mackenzie Valley Highway alone is projected to cost C$1.65 billion, with the majority of the cost covered by the federal government. In this context, C$1 billion over four years—while an admirable start—is simply not enough to make a significant difference. To address infrastructure needs in Canada’s north, and to transform its portion of the Arctic so it is no longer the “soft underbelly” of the North American Arctic, this funding must be only the beginning of the Canadian government’s investments. As Carney’s large-scale projects continue to unfold, the Canadian Arctic will require more resources to meet civil and military infrastructure needs and effectively project power into the north.

In late 2025, the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative hosted a workshop with government officials, academic experts, and participants from the public and private sectors of Canada, the United States, and Europe. The insights gathered from these conversations helped inform this issue brief, which assesses challenges, recommendations, and opportunities for Canada’s infrastructure in the Arctic.

Recommendations for the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces

Incorporate sustainability and climate security in Arctic infrastructure planning

Many of the Canadian government’s plans for infrastructure in the Arctic are dual use in nature, with the goal of increasing its military footprint in the region. Increased military or infrastructure presence in Canada’s north will invariably have environmental ramifications. Air- and sea-based military activities can generate excessive noise levels and air pollution, while military exercises can result in soil compaction and the destruction of vegetation. As Canada grows its infrastructure footprint in the north, it will need to include countermeasures to offset this damage—such as creating specific operational zones to protect ecosystems or paying to mitigate harm done to the environment. 

Despite these challenges, Canada has extensive resources at its disposal, such as NATO’s new Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence (CCASCOE), headquartered in Montreal. This center can coordinate best practices, act as a standard-setting body, and provide guidance for allies and partners to operate sustainably in the region. Drawing on lessons from the European Arctic and adapting them for the North American Arctic is one area in which this center of excellence can benefit dual-use infrastructure projects.

Another reason to ensure infrastructure in the Canadian Arctic meets environmental standards is to support Canada’s new Climate Competitiveness Strategy. By linking climate sustainability to economic growth, the Canadian government is building a competitive advantage at a time when other Group of Seven (G7) countries and the European Union are walking back pledges to meet green targets.

Include local communities’ expertise and experiences in infrastructure development

As investments in Canada’s Arctic infrastructure increase, environmental considerations are being taken into account—and the experiences and expertise of those living in Canada’s northernmost regions must also be integrated into planning. Indigenous and local communities are on the forefront of the challenges facing the region, from sinking roads and runways to access to healthcare. Calls to work with Indigenous and First Nation communities are integrated throughout the budget.

Starting in 2025–2026, the government is allocating C$40 million over two years to Indigenous Services Canada through the Strategic Partnerships Initiative “to support Indigenous capacity building and consultation on nation-building projects,” some of which will be in the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Infrastructure Fund, with its C$1 billion over four years, is specifically tasked with advancing Indigenous economic reconciliation. The budget highlights that “dual-use infrastructure investments in the north will reliably meet both military and local needs, and the government recognizes that Inuit, First Nations, and other communities are best placed to identify community needs.” Spending on infrastructure in Canada’s north has military, economic, and local resilience factors. Ensuring local and Indigenous perspectives are integrated into all stages of infrastructure development—from the planning stages to design, groundbreaking, and finalization of projects—will be key to ensuring the investments successfully meet the needs of both the military and the local community. Investing in roadways, ports, and railways in the Arctic, in close alignment with the local community, will amplify whole-of-society resilience in ways not yet realized.

Recognize critical minerals’ potential as a driver of infrastructure development in the region.

The Canadian government’s decision to increase investment in infrastructure and its northern territories can be partially understood by the global race for rare earth materials heating up. At the G7 meeting in Alberta, the prime minister introduced the Critical Minerals Production Alliance—a Canadian-led initiative that leverages trusted international partnerships to enhance critical mineral supply chains for collective defense and advanced technology.

Canada is one of the top five producers of ten critical minerals, and minerals account for 5 percent of Canada’s nominal GDP. Its northern regions are home to significant deposits of iron ore, gold, diamonds, and rare earth elements. The Mary River Mine on Baffin Island is one of the world’s northernmost reserves of high-grade iron ore, producing millions of tons annually. Similarly, the Hope Bay and Meliadine gold mines contribute substantially to Canada’s mineral output. These resources are critical for economic development and for national security.

Another major priority identified in the new budget is the Port of Churchill Plus. A series of projects will upgrade the Port of Churchill—Canada’s only Arctic-region deepwater port for more than 106,000 miles of coastline—and expand trade corridors with an all-weather road, an upgraded rail line, a new energy corridor, and marine icebreaking capacity. The goal is for the Port of Churchill to become a major four-season and dual-use gateway for the region. Expanded export capacity in the north through Hudson Bay will contribute to increased and diversified trade with Europe and other partners, while more strongly linking Churchill to the rest of Canada.

While this push for access to critical minerals makes sense from an economic perspective, it has several notable roadblocks to overcome. First is the lack of processing and refinement capabilities in Canada, and in the West more broadly. China has exerted a global chokehold over rare earth materials globally, partly due to its technical expertise in the processing stage. Western companies have struggled to compete with China over environmental and regulatory concerns, which leads to the second point: Extraction of critical minerals has an environmental tradeoff. Canada’s economic expansionism and green ambitions will eventually collide—likely in the critical minerals space. In the ever-shifting global market for critical minerals, Canada cannot prioritize short-term economic gain over long-term environmental consequences.

As always, one of the core challenges facing infrastructure projects in Canada’s north lies in sustaining this momentum in the long term. The narrow passage of this budget by parliament demonstrates the challenges of minority government rule. Improving affordability for average Canadians was the main refrain of those who voted against the new budget—a challenge that will not go away in the short term. In the long term, Carney must break the chronic habit of previous governments promising on defense spending without following through. The budget also highlights upcoming sacrifices—C$60 billion in total spending cuts in the next five years—including a 10 percent cut to the public sector (amounting to roughly forty thousand jobs). Although the C$1 billion in funding through the Arctic Infrastructure Fund is a strong step forward, it will need considerably more funding to meet Canada’s ambitions in the region and must be supported by action.

Jason C. Moyer is a nonresident fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. 

Issue Brief May 30, 2025

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The Transatlantic Security Initiative aims to reinforce the strong and resilient transatlantic relationship that is prepared to deter and defend, succeed in strategic competition, and harness emerging capabilities to address future threats and opportunities.

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The post Prioritizing Canada’s investment in Arctic infrastructure appeared first on Atlantic Council.

None of this is entirely new, of course. Putin has long been notorious for delivering rambling history lectures to justify Russia’s war against Ukraine, and has directly compared the current invasion to Russian Czar Peter the Great’s eighteenth-century wars of imperial conquest. Nevertheless, at a time when European leaders are already looking to the eastern horizon with trepidation, it makes sense to explore what Putin means by “historically Russian lands” and examine just how far his imperial ambitions may actually stretch.

The most straightforward interpretation of Putin’s latest comments would suggest that he was referring to the portion of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that remains under Ukrainian control. After all, this small but heavily fortified and strategically important territory is currently at the heart of negotiations and has been named by Moscow as its price for a ceasefire. However, Kremlin officials are well known for sending contradictory signals regarding their territorial objectives in Ukraine, with Putin himself speaking this month about the “inevitable liberation of the Donbas and Novorossiya.”

Putin’s reference to “Novorossiya” (“New Russia”) raised eyebrows and was widely seen as a signal that Russia may be preparing to increase its territorial demands. The Czarist era term “Novorossiya” was first employed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by imperial administrators to describe large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine then under Russian rule. It fell into disuse during the Soviet period, only to be resurrected by the Kremlin following the onset of Russia’s Ukraine invasion in 2014.

Russian nationalists have yet to agree on the exact boundaries of Novorossiya, but most envisage a territory stretching far beyond the partially occupied Ukrainian provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson that are currently claimed by the Kremlin. Putin has indicated that his definition of Novorossiya encompasses approximately half of Ukraine, including the country’s entire Black Sea coastline and major cities such as Odesa and Kharkiv.

Then there is the question of Kyiv. According to Russia’s own national mythology, the capital of Ukraine is also the mother of Russian cities and the spiritual birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. Putin has repeatedly referenced the sacred status of Kyiv in his many essays and speeches denying the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood. It is therefore extremely difficult to imagine him accepting any peace proposal that secures Kyiv’s postwar position as the capital of an independent Ukraine. Putin can hardly claim to be reuniting Russia’s historic lands if he leaves the most Russian city of them all firmly in the hands of a hostile state.

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.

Based on his own public pronouncements and extensive writings on the subject, it seems reasonable to conclude that Putin’s understanding of historically Russian lands includes the whole of Ukraine. Indeed, he has made no real secret of this conviction. “I have said many times that I consider the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to be one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” Putin told guests at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in summer 2025. The real question is whether his imperial agenda extends beyond the borders of Ukraine.

In a geographical sense, Putin’s vision of historical Russia is definitely not confined to Ukraine alone. Instead, it includes the vast additional expanses of the Czarist Russian Empire and its Soviet successor. “What is the Soviet Union? It is historical Russia,” Putin declared in 2022. A year earlier, he had lamented the fall of the USSR as “the disintegration of historical Russia” by another name. “We turned into a completely different country,” Putin stated. “And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost.”

When European dictators start ranting about lost thousand-year empires, it rarely bodes well for international security. Putin is no exception. The Kremlin dictator’s determination to reverse modern Russia’s fall from grace has come to dominate his reign and has led directly to the biggest European war since World War II. His deeply felt sense of historical grievance over the Soviet collapse has fueled a poisonous obsession with Ukraine, which Putin regards as the ultimate symbol of the injustice resulting from the breakup of the USSR.

Due to its large size, geographical proximity, shared history, significant ethnic Russian population, and perceived cultural closeness, Ukraine occupies a prominent place in Russia’s imperial identity. However, it is wishful thinking to imagine that sacrificing Ukraine will appease Putin or persuade him to forget about the rest of the former Russian Empire. Instead, the same bogus historical arguments used to justify the invasion of Ukraine could easily be applied to a host of other nations. Any country that was previously subjected to Russian imperial rule could technically fall within Putin’s broad definition of historically Russian lands. “We have an old rule,” he commented earlier this year. “Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot is ours.”

Based on the boundaries of the Czarist Empire at its greatest extent on the eve of World War I, potential targets of future Russian aggression could include Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the nations of Central Asia. Nor is this list exhaustive. A truly maximalist approach would also require the inclusion of the many former Soviet satellite states that made up the Eastern Bloc during the second half of the twentieth century.

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With the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine about to enter a fifth year, many in the West are now beginning to take Putin’s imperial ambitions increasingly seriously. According to Reuters, recent United States intelligence assessments confirm that Putin has not abandoned his aims of capturing all of Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe that once belonged to the former Soviet Empire. “The Europeans are convinced of it. The Poles are absolutely convinced of it. The Baltics think they’re first,” the report noted.

Not everyone is so sure. Skeptics tend to question Putin’s ability to wage a major war against the West, with many pointing to his army’s underwhelming performance in Ukraine as proof of Russia’s military limitations. This is comforting but dangerously misleading. In reality, Russia’s lack of progress since 2022 is not a sign of any fundamental weakness; it is testament to the formidable strength and staggering sacrifices of the Ukrainian nation. However, Ukraine’s remarkable resistance against overwhelming odds cannot continue indefinitely and must not be taken for granted. If Ukraine falls, Europe will face a challenge it is utterly unprepared for.

Today, the Ukrainian army is by far the biggest and most experienced fighting force in Europe, other than Russia itself. It is backed by a rapidly expanding and highly innovative domestic military industry that is rewriting the rules of modern warfare. If Putin is permitted to succeed in establishing control over Ukraine, all this will be rapidly integrated into the Kremlin war machine. A partially disarmed Europe will then find itself confronted by a dramatically emboldened Putin, who will have the continent’s two largest armies at his disposal. In such uniquely favorable circumstances, the chances of him choosing not to press home his advantage are next to zero.

The internal logic of the Putin regime is an additional factor driving Russia’s expansionist impulse. Economically, politically, and culturally, Russian society is now deeply militarized in ways that will be extremely difficult to reverse without destabilizing the country. Nor is the Kremlin in any hurry to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers currently fighting in Ukraine. These men are now used to receiving vastly inflated salaries and have been brutalized by the bloodiest invasion in modern history. Keeping them occupied, and preferably as far away from Russia as possible, is now a very real national security priority for Moscow.

Putin may also be encouraged to act by the current geopolitical climate, which presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to advance Russia’s imperial agenda. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has signaled a radical shift in US policy toward the war in Ukraine and the broader defense of Europe. This has led to a mounting sense of insecurity in European capitals amid unprecedented concerns over America’s commitment to NATO collective security. Would a Russian attack on the Baltic states trigger an Article 5 response from the US? Given Trump’s posturing on NATO budgets and his administration’s ambivalent attitude toward Europe, some believe this can no longer be taken for granted.

Europe alone is not yet in a position to defend itself against Russia. After decades of defense sector neglect, effective rearmament will take years to complete. European leaders have also failed to demonstrate the kind of collective political will necessary to deter the Kremlin. The recent failure to agree on the use of frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort was the latest in a long line of climb downs that have signaled Europe’s chronic disunity and crippling fear of escalation. There are many good reasons why Putin may not rush to expand the war, but concern over a potentially decisive European response is not one of them.

As evidence of Western weakness continues to mount, Putin is growing bolder. In recent months, he has escalated Russia’s hybrid war against Europe with sabotage attacks on critical infrastructure and drone incursions across the continent. In the diplomatic arena, Kremlin officials recently renewed calls for NATO to retreat from central and Eastern Europe, a move that would expose more than a dozen countries to the threat of Russian aggression for the first time in a generation. Meanwhile, rhetoric in the Russian state media targeting Finland, the Baltic states, and other front line countries now increasingly echoes the propaganda that preceded the invasion of Ukraine.

As he plots to rebuild the Russian Empire, Putin is unlikely to be working to any set schedule or clearly defined territorial goal. Instead, the gradual escalation of Russia’s Ukraine invasion over the past twelve years indicates that he is an opportunistic imperialist whose appetite grows with eating. At the same time, it is obvious that his radical revisionist agenda is not limited to Ukraine and poses a very real threat to European security.

Putin believes he is on an historic mission to restore Russia to its rightful place as a global superpower and the dominant force in Europe. Erasing Ukrainian statehood is just the beginning. While we cannot know for sure where he will strike next or how far he ultimately plans to go, it is delusional to think that handing Putin victory in Ukraine will convince him to stop. On the contrary, a Russian success in Ukraine would almost certainly mean more war and lead to decades of European instability.

Putin’s vow to liberate historically Russian lands is an open-ended excuse for imperial expansion that makes a complete mockery of US-led efforts to broker a compromise peace based on limited Russian gains in southern and eastern Ukraine. Clearly, this would not be enough to placate Putin and cannot serve as the basis for a sustainable settlement.

The peace terms currently being discussed would leave approximately 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to continue integrating with the West. This is exactly what Putin aims to prevent. After four years of fighting to reverse the verdict of the Cold War, any peace deal that safeguards Ukrainian independence would be recognized in Moscow as a Russian defeat of historic proportions. Instead, Putin knows he must continue the invasion until a fully subjugated Ukraine can become a stepping stone for the next stage in his expansionist agenda.

In his quest to secure a place in history among Russia’s greatest rulers, Putin has long since passed the point of no return. He will not deviate from this messianic goal for the sake of sanctions relief or minor territorial concessions. Any efforts to establish a lasting peace must be firmly grounded in this sobering reality. Peace is possible, but only if the pressure on Putin is increased to the point where he begins to fear defeat on the battlefields of Ukraine and potential collapse on the home front inside Russia.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 11, 2025

Russia’s insistence on a defenseless Ukraine betrays Putin’s true intentions

By Peter Dickinson

Russia’s key demands during US-led peace talks all appear designed to leave Ukraine disarmed and defenseless. This is a clear indication of Vladimir Putin’s intention to continue his invasion and complete the conquest of Ukraine, writes Peter Dickinson.

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UkraineAlert Dec 16, 2025

The only winner from Ukrainian wartime elections would be Putin

By Yuriy Boyechko

Ukrainians are fighting to defend their democracy against Kremlin authoritarianism, but they are also in no rush to hold wartime elections amid relentless Russian bombardment and with millions of Ukrainians displaced, writes Yuriy Boyechko.

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UkraineAlert Dec 18, 2025

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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.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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The post Reclaiming Russia’s ‘historical lands’: How far do Putin’s imperial ambitions extend? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

New president, new pressures

José Antonio Kast will head to La Moneda in March 2026. Chile’s president-elect won the second round of the election with 58.2 percent of the vote—winning by a margin of more than 16 percentage points. The day after the election, Kast met with outgoing President Gabriel Boric and emphasized afterward that he will advance a “government of national unity on priority issues: security, health, education, and housing.”

Kast will enter office with a slew of economic pressures in his inbox: slow growth, weak investment, stagnant productivity, high inequality, limited social mobility, and regional gaps. The labor market remains segmented, with low female participation and high informality. Along with these economic pressures, security and rising crime rates dominated the electoral campaign and addressing them will be central to Kast’s government plan.

In 2024, Chile’s economy showed signs of stable but uneven recovery, with moderate 2.6-percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth driven largely by mining, easing inflation, and falling poverty, while unemployment and informality remained elevated and investment growth lagged. Looking ahead to 2026, growth is expected to remain steady at 2.6 percent. Alongside a narrowing fiscal deficit and inflation stabilizing, this suggests a macroeconomic environment that is steady but still dependent on restoring investment momentum.

Chileans want to see changes and expect Kast to deliver some economic wins quickly. But the ability to do so goes hand in hand with addressing the increased rates of crime and violence. Kast’s campaign focused on the security of the country with proposals such as his Plan Implacable,  which aims to “restore state authority and curb organized crime” through tougher penalties, more federal control over prisons, and stronger security operations, while also reasserting state authority in areas where criminal networks have expanded. This plan might be among the things on which Chileans want Kast to take action first. However, Kast and his administration need to balance what they want and what they can actually get done, especially regarding migration and deportation.

A challenging congress

The first one hundred days of the Kast administration will test the executive’s ability to move legislation that supports faster growth, rebuilds investor confidence that has been weakened by security concerns and political fragmentation, and signals a clearer economic direction.

That said, Kast takes office with a congress that leans right but does not give him full control. Right and far-right parties aligned with Kast hold seventy-six of the 155 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, with his second-round opponent Jeannette Jara’s left and far-left coalition of Unidad por Chile controlling sixty-one. The swing party of Franco Parisi, Partido de la Gente, holds fourteen seats.

Kast will need a simple majority to pass most legislation. But constitutional amendments and reforms of the electoral system would require two-thirds of votes in the congress. Kast’s coalition cannot reach either threshold on its own, and must work with partners to move any major bill forward. This makes the Partido de la Gente especially important. Because no bloc controls a majority, its fourteen deputies are in position to decide whether a proposal advances or fails. Its votes can tilt negotiations, shape the final text of legislation, and determine how governable the next term becomes.

Passing legislation through the lower house will be easier, but major legislation such as Kast’s proposed mass deportations will need broader support. The evenly split senate will require him to work with the traditional right as well as swing actors to move legislation. As such, Kast will be faced with increased pressure to deliver short-term results on crime and economic growth, signaling early whether his administration can translate public demand for order and stability into a more predictable environment for investment, something US investors typically look for before committing capital in Chile.

How Chile’s investment environment has shifted

Since the mid-1980s, Chile has implemented significant reforms that opened its economy and encouraged foreign investment. These included changes in the financial and social markets, such as Law No. 20.848 of 2015 establishing the framework for foreign direct investment (FDI), as well as other tax and labor reforms. However, social unrest in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic, two failed constitutional reform attempts, and rising crime have affected investor confidence.

The foundation for investment in Chile lies in democracy, rule of law, and a predictable regulatory environment. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has indicated that Chile’s growth might be reaching a ceiling, making continued reforms—such as streamlining permits, encouraging innovation, digitalizing paperwork, simplifying regulations, and removing bottlenecks—essential for reigniting momentum.

What makes Chile an attractive destination for US investors

Several conditions strengthen opportunities for US investment in Chile. Together they shape a more attractive environment for long-term investment is likely to be a priority for the incoming Kast government.

• Chile is a key tech hub in Latin America. This is because of its stable economy, strong startup ecosystem, skilled workforce, advanced digital infrastructure, and government-backed innovation programs. Successful tech projects require a strong and solid workforce. According to CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent 2025 report, Santiago has the third-highest tech talent pool in Latin America, with more than 143,000 professionals. This positions Chile as an attractive hub for companies to expand. That said, most initiatives are heavily concentrated in Santiago, emphasizing the need for additional training in both the northern and southern regions to ensure successful new project implementation.
• US companies benefit from working with reliable local partners, in part because Chile has clear rules for contracts and strong institutions and because local firms usually have long experience navigating permitting, local procurement, cultural nuances, and sector-specific regulations. These conditions create an environment where these partnerships give foreign investors a dependable base of support on the ground.  
• Investors trust Chile because its infrastructure is strong, and its politics stay steady. In 2024, Chile received $15.3 billion in FDI, one of the highest inflows in recent years. A big share of that comes from reinvesting earnings, which shows that companies already in Chile are confident enough to expand. The government agency InvestChile closed 2024 with a portfolio of $56.2 billion in foreign-backed projects, with US companies investing the largest share at $20.5 billion. Major investments target clean energy: green hydrogen, mining, and infrastructure. These numbers show that foreign investors, especially those from the United States, believe in Chile’s long-term stability and the clarity of its rules. They see a country where projects can start quickly and scale up, thanks to predictable regulations and reliable systems. That confidence in both infrastructure and political stability strengthens the case for more investment.

The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)’s mandate prioritizes investments in markets that offer predictability, stability, and clear rules, conditions that have historically made countries like Chile attractive for engagement. The DFC, a US federal agency, was created under the 2018 Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development (BUILD) Act, which merged the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) with USAID’s Development Credit Authority. Its core purpose is to mobilize private capital to advance US development and foreign policy objectives by leveraging financial tools such as loans, equity investments, guarantees, and political risk insurance to support private-sector-led solutions in markets where commercial finance is limited or unavailable.

In December 2025, Congress reauthorized and modernized the DFC through the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), extending its authorization through 2031, and significantly expanding its scope and authorities. Under this reauthorization, the DFC’s investment cap (Maximum Contingent Liability) was raised to $205 billion, and the agency gained new tools, including a $5 billion equity revolving fund and increased equity investment authority. The legislation also broadened DFC’s ability to invest in more countries and sectors while placing limits on financing in the wealthiest countries, ensuring that no more than 10 percent of its portfolio may support high-income markets, with specified sector exceptions such as energy, critical minerals, and information and communications technology.

While Chile’s high-income status means that large-scale DFC engagement is still limited compared with developing markets, the agency can support selected projects in strategic areas, including clean energy, critical minerals, infrastructure, and technology, particularly where there is a clear economic or strategic rationale and consistent with the statutory constraints on participation in wealthy countries.

Addressing bottlenecks to further FDI in Chile

Following the presidential election, Chile enters a new political phase with renewed attention on how the next administration will translate campaign promises into policy. Chile continues to take steps to strengthen its investment environment, while facing persistent bottlenecks that shape foreign investor confidence and will influence the country’s economic direction in the months ahead.

• Regulatory delays are a major concern and become impediments. Permitting and environmental review processes can take several years. However, the Framework Law on Sectoral Authorizations (Law 21.770)—better known as the Ley de Permisología, which creates the Framework Law on Sectoral Authorizations (LMAS)—was enacted and posted in September 2025. The goal is to update and speed up the permit process to encourage investment. The law creates a single digital portal called SUPER to manage permits simultaneously, introduces simplified procedures for low-risk projects, and establishes administrative silence. Streamlining and updating procedures are expected to drop processing times between 30 percent and 70 percent without lowering regulatory standards. This will also be a step forward for attracting foreign investment.
• Policy uncertainty remains a concern for long-term investors. Over the past decade, shifts between governments of the right and left have created questions about the direction of future regulations. Relations between Santiago and Washington are expected to further deepen under a new administration. Kast will need to show that he can meet public expectations for stronger growth and higher investment. Here, it’s critical to balance the demands of [JF1] parties across the political spectrum as this congressional balancing act is what’s needed to advance legislation reassuring to investors. Although Chile has struggled lately to attract FDI, the United States remains its second-largest source, with a strong presence in energy, data centers, and mining.
• The economy also plays a major role in the current political moment. Chile has experienced slow growth for several years and unemployment sits at about 9 percent. Investment remains stagnant, with inflation and high living costs shaping daily choices for many Chileans. Voters widely see the current government as falling short in addressing these issues. The national budget was also a central topic of conversation during the election. The legislative commission in charge of reviewing the annual budget recently rejected the proposal for 2026; Kast will now likely express his approach to next year’s spending plan in the short term. That said, his proposal of gradual elimination of property taxes on primary residences, starting with those on homeowners over sixty-five, would reduce government revenue, meaning the 2026 budget will need to account for this shortfall. The administration will need to balance funding public services and implementing the policy in a fiscally responsible way.
• Security is another major risk. While Chile remains relatively safe in comparison to select other countries, crime has risen in recent years—including organized crime, drug trafficking, and violence in northern regions and Santiago. Researchers estimate crime costs the country nearly $8 billion annually, discouraging some foreign investment. Kast made public safety a core part of his platform through the previous mentioned Plan Implacable, which includes tougher penalties for organized crime, high-security prisons, expanded self-defense laws, protections for law enforcement and judicial actors, and targeted border security measures with his Plan Escudo Fronterizo.

Sectors in Chile with investment potential

• Information technology (IT): Chile’s IT sector is expanding rapidly, driven by high internet penetration, widespread mobile connectivity, and growing demand for digital services. Key emerging sectors include fifth-generation (5G) deployment, big-data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) integration, supported by initiatives such as Chile Digital 2035 and the National AI Policy. To accelerate growth, Chile can build on existing programs by expanding Chile Digital 2035 and Digital Talent for Chile, increasing investment in digital infrastructure, scaling training and education initiatives, and deepening public-private partnerships to ensure broader access to advanced IT solutions, close the skills gap, and achieve full digitalization of public services.
• Critical minerals (copper and lithium): As the world’s largest copper producer, supplying 24 percent of global output, and home to 41 percent of lithium reserves, Chile is a strategic source of materials essential for clean technologies. These include electric vehicles, energy storage, and digital infrastructure. With public policies promoting sustainability and high environmental standards, Chile is positioning itself to attract investment that advances technological innovation, supports the global energy transition, and fosters inclusive economic growth. China currently dominates global demand for Chilean copper and lithium, but Kast could attract more Western-aligned investment by promoting legal certainty, officering incentives, and fostering partnerships with companies that meet high environmental and governmental standards.
• Water management and drought mitigation: Chile is increasingly leveraging public-private partnerships to improve water management and climate resilience. Investments focus on both traditional infrastructure, such as dams, and natural solutions including reforestation and wetland restoration. There is demand for technologies that enhance water efficiency, like advanced treatment and recycling systems, data-driven water management tools, and construction waste reduction. Sustainable agricultural practices that conserve water and lower input costs also present promising opportunities. Water management could become a strategic priority for Kast, with the advancement of such projects allowing the administration to deliver visible results, balance regional needs, and contribute to Chile’s robust agriculture sector.
• Seismic-resilient infrastructure: Situated on one of the most active fault lines in the world, Chile experiences frequent earthquakes, including several above magnitudes of eight. Critical infrastructure—such as ports, airports, and energy facilities—requires modern seismic design. There is strong demand for engineering and technology services in risk modeling, resilience planning, and early warning systems. Opportunities include digital twins, smart sensors, and integrated solutions to strengthen utilities, transportation networks, and urban development.

How can the new Kast administration help unlock Chile’s economic potential and attract investment?

• Visit Washington before the March 11 inauguration. This would reinforce Chile’s shared interests in economic security and investment cooperation, present project pipelines aligned with DFC priorities and clarify Chile’s commitments in areas such as energy transition and trade. Early engagement would allow Chile to secure a proactive position in shaping US investment decisions, demonstrate commitment to close cooperation with the United States, and build political support in the US Congress and executive branch for stronger bilateral financing ties. When in Washington, use the visit to generate broader public interest in the importance of Chile as a strong US partner.
• Identify emerging skills and priority growth sectors in Chile and encourage private-sector programs that link education directly to industry needs. Kast can do this by providing tax incentives and speeding up the processing of paperwork for companies involved in workforce training. Scholarships, vocational training, apprenticeships, and partnerships with universities that teach technical skills can help equip students and current workers with the skills required for mining, technology, energy, and other strategic industries.
• Maintain continuity in key policies on permitting reforms. This applies to policies such as the Ley de Permisología, which aims to streamline and coordinate environmental and sectoral permitting across government agencies, and they should be expanded to ensure that the ministries and offices involved are actively collaborating with each other. If government entities are not coordinating—for example, in the processing of environment permits—the procedures for key sectors such as mining and technology will continue to be delayed. Demonstrating consistency will reinforce Chile’s reputation as a stable investment destination and encourage both new and reinvested capital.
• Avoid over-centralizing these initiatives in Santiago. This can be done by collaborating with regional partners or established private-sector actors to develop and train local workforces. This could include local recruitment, training programs at regional universities, and ongoing partnerships between the government and private sector.

These measures strengthen security in ways that matter for investors by creating clearer rules, steadier institutions, and stronger local trust. When the government improves workforce training and expands formal job opportunities, it reduces pressures that fuel crime in regions tied to mining and energy. Better coordination on permits lowers chances of corruption or operational disruptions because companies face fewer conflicting decisions from different agencies. Together, these steps create a safer and more predictable environment for investors. 

Conclusion

Chile remains a trusted and stable partner for the United States. Its democratic values, institutional strength, and openness to trade make it a strategic destination for US investment. But sustaining and expanding this partnership will require continued economic reforms and political engagement between both countries to ease processes for doing business, improve regulatory efficiency, enhance human capital, and foster political stability toward a robust, long-term strategic partnership. As Kast prepares to take office, he has an opportunity to set a foundation to ignite Chile’s economic growth and attract investment. And with the Western Hemisphere as a top priority for Washington, Chile has the potential to be an even more strategic partner to the United States.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors alone. Some of the investment opportunities discussed in this issue brief were informed by an October roundtable discussion on US-Chile investment relations, which included the participation of US and Chilean private-sector leaders, public-sector representatives, and multilateral organizations. The roundtable was organized in partnership with AmCham Chile and with the support of MetLife. Neither were involved in the production of this issue brief.

Maite Gonzalez Latorre is program assistant at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council.

Jason Marczak is vice president and senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

Learn more

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Many political and security leaders remain unconvinced that employment should be its own goal or that employment is central to immediate security. While US President Donald Trump’s twenty-point peace plan for Gaza refers to employment in broad terms, it is only referenced as an outcome of investments and large-scale development, but employment is not viewed as a goal in and of itself.

For example, point number ten states that “many thoughtful investment proposals . . . will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for the future of Gaza.”

Gaza cannot function without guaranteed pathways to work. To disarm Hamas, there must be a fiscal strategy alongside effective street-level security. Most critically, the best way to undermine Hamas’s power on the ground is to employ the people Hamas pays today. Security requires a fiscal plan; in Gaza, Hamas controls labor, resources, and opportunity, eliminating competition. To break this chokehold, Gaza requires deliberate intervention to generate employment across sectors.

Hamas and Gaza’s employment crisis

Before the launch of war in 2023, Gaza already faced some of the worst labor conditions in the region. Hamas-led public sector employment accounted for nearly one-third of all those working in the Strip, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. In 2017, the average monthly household expenditure in Gaza was 934 dinars, or roughly $1,300. Meanwhile, Hamas is paying young fighters up to three hundred dollars per month, according to Wall Street Journal reporting citing Israeli officials—an amount that pays for a crucial portion of those expenses. Additionally, the patronage network system of Hamas meant that those in the militant group’s networks were able to access aid, resources, and other market goods in a way that those unaffiliated could not, something that has continued throughout the war as well.

This meant that the few available jobs or reliable opportunities inside Gaza were disproportionately Hamas-affiliated—whether related to civil service or fighting. Against this backdrop, youth unemployment reached as high as 70 percent in Gaza, and overall unemployment reached 80 percent.

Today, close to 70 percent of Gaza’s population is homeless or displaced, with no clarity on when they will return to stable housing. This has made the need for new employment even more urgent.

When more than a million people have no work, no prospects, and no timeline for rebuilding their lives, the outcome is predictable: Many will return to the only functioning economic structure available, which is dominated by the Hamas-led network. Gaza’s geographic isolation exacerbates this, as the majority of Gazans have never left the Strip. Without jobs, mobility, or legitimate income, dependency becomes permanent.

If Hamas were no longer the leading source of employment, its patronage networks would weaken, reducing its control over communities’ access to salaries, goods, and services. Peacebuilding experience shows that employment changes daily incentives. People with families, stability, and predictable income see militancy as a high-cost and less rational choice.

Ignoring the central variable

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) belief that it has sufficient institutional capacity to rehabilitate Gaza, as its prime minister wrote recently in its economic plan, is troubling to most long-term analysts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Almost every major Arab country and Western ally has made it clear through numerous UN resolutions and diplomatic statements (including most recently in Trump’s twenty-point plan and the New York declaration by Saudi Arabia and France) that the PA requires significant reformation before it can take on control of Gaza.

In the PA’s recently released economic plans, unemployment is treated only as a minor humanitarian issue, rather than a development factor or as a central determinant of whether a cease-fire can hold or Gaza returns to terrorism and war. Specifically, the plan suggests providing $4.2 billion in cash assistance for food, supplies, minor reconstruction, and housing support. Yet, the plan’s development of employment schemes and workforce participation receives only $500 million—far short of what is required for serious job creation.

To underscore just how ill-prepared PA thinking is regarding employment outcomes, to match the current income provided by Hamas employment, the plan would need several billion dollars annually to enable workers to earn the same as they do now from Hamas coffers, as either civil servants or fighters. Yet the PA plan, similar to the Trump plan, does not explicitly focus on the details of making new workforce access available or on pursuing long-term job creation through strategic development, nor does it seek to put significant resources towards the goal of earned income. Instead, it commits Gaza to being an aid-dependent economy, in which international investors are expected to operate without a reliable labor force. This is a direct path back to patronage, dependency, and long-term instability.

Employment as a human rights and security imperative

In my book, What Role for Human Rights in Peacebuilding, I argued that peacebuilding has traditionally overemphasized political rights, institution-building, and security-sector reform while relegating economic, social, and cultural rights to a secondary status. Yet, human rights are interconnected and cannot be pursued as separate goals. Political participation cannot be realized when people are uneducated, unhealthy, unhoused, or unemployed. Civil and political rights must be linked to economic, social, and cultural rights for transitions to be viable.

The models often employed in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process do not address foundational gaps in economic, social, and cultural rights, especially in the area of long-term employment. Unless international leadership takes seriously the central role employment plays in deradicalization and stabilization, Gaza’s reconstruction will replicate past failures. Employment is a framework for disarmament, but only when sustained for the long term—not when limited to temporary per diem labor, food-for-work schemes, or short-term projects.

A sustainable employment paradigm must be put at the center of Gaza’s next phase. Many Gazans will explain, when asked, that many of the flanks of Hamas fighters are not driven by ideology but by predictable payrolls and access to goods for Hamas-affiliated families. Without a competing legal economy, Hamas will always have recruits.

Gaza needs macroeconomic and microeconomic development schemes that create market infrastructure capable of supporting the entire workforce. Education, vocational training, private-sector investment, and targeted upskilling can all generate meaningful employment. In Gaza, ignoring this is not simply poor economics. It is a direct security risk. This requires understanding the actual size of Gaza’s labor force, reasonable income targets, and priority sectors where workers can quickly enter employment with existing or modestly enhanced skills. Both public- and private-sector models will be required, with private-sector growth as the long-term engine of prosperity.

A full-employment-oriented mandate is not extreme government intervention, nor is it a call for the PA to dominate the labor market; rather, it should be defined as a strategy for long-term private-sector growth, carried out in partnership with and supported by public actors.

Impact on Palestinian sovereignty

Palestinian self-sovereignty requires economic independence and access to the world. One of the strongest inoculations against Hamas is broad access to markets and opportunities. Some of this will require long-term planning and sector-specific analysis, but many aspects are straightforward. For example, if private firms and the international community could employ Gazans to rebuild at even a slightly higher wage than Hamas salaries, stable employment could ultimately extend to swaths of the population, with Gazans able to support their families without using dollars tied to the militant group.

Sectors such as environmental rehabilitation, food production, education, medical care, infrastructure, and vocational services all require new labor. If a transitional authority seeks to meet the moment, it should invest heavily in private-sector job creation so that disarmament, deradicalization, and reintegration can begin.

Gaza’s next phase must recognize what weakens Hamas’s grip: economic independence and freedom of movement. Employment severs Hamas’s patronage networks by providing a reliable income not tied to armed actors. It rewires daily incentives, making militancy too costly for most people. The appeal of armed groups declines as economic opportunity expands.

Gaza’s future depends on far more than security forces or humanitarian aid. It depends on whether people see a path out of the rubble that is grounded in economic self-sovereignty, dignity, and the possibility of success. If security and political leaders ignore this reality, they will guarantee that the next war comes even while the debris of this one remains.

Melanie Robbins is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Realign For Palestine project.

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• Introduction
• Russia’s relationship with Ukraine
• Russia’s global standing
• About the author

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been, by any metric, a strategic nightmare for Moscow. Not only has Russia lost more soldiers in Ukraine than in any war since World War II—and might well end up losing more troops than the United States lost during the entirety of WWII—but the Russian economy has lurched between overheating and stagflation. All the while, the Kremlin’s decision to expand its invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a NATO both enlarged and enhanced; in Russia’s transition from regional hegemon to a “junior partner” (and even potential vassal) of China; in waning influence in places such as the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe; and the creation of a heavily armed, deeply resentful neighbor in Ukraine, which will see Kyiv nurse both an animus toward Russia and a desire to reclaim much of the occupied territories for years to come.

The entire war has been an exercise in Russian myopia, accelerating Russian decline and leading to a broad range of self-inflicted wounds. Mirroring other neo-colonial wars—France in Algeria, the Netherlands in Indonesia, Portugal in southern Africa—the war has exposed Russia as a pretender to great-power status and a shell of a once-swaggering empire. While Moscow might yet gain more towns scattered throughout Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, any remaining victories will remain pyrrhic, with Russia continuing to sacrifice its future prospects for any present gains.

Much of Russia’s failure rests on Ukrainians’ ongoing sacrifices, as well as on the broader West’s willingness to back Ukraine’s troops. But a great deal of this disaster also stems from a series of muddled narratives that Russia has peddled about precisely why it launched the expanded invasion in the first place. Pushing a sprawling, occasionally contradictory series of goals and rationales, and without a clear narrative push to consolidate either support or success, Moscow has flailed for years, lurching from one rationale to another—all while its troops continue dying en masse and its domestic population continues to feel escalating pain and stress as the war drags on.

Given all of the competing claims Moscow has put forth to defend its invasion of Ukraine, it is worth analyzing how the Kremlin has justified its expanded war and how Moscow has tried to sell the deadliest war Europe has seen since the days of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Such analysis can not only help Western allies of Ukraine figure out how best to back Kyiv’s efforts but can provide a roadmap for sounder Russia policy in the West overall. In sifting and sorting these narratives, we can identify precisely what is motivating the Kremlin—and, better yet, how to stop it.

Selling the war

The Kremlin’s public rationales for its war in Ukraine fall into two broad buckets.

The first rests directly on Russia’s relationship with Ukraine, focusing specifically on the links, both historic and contemporary, between Moscow and Kyiv. The narratives focused specifically on Ukraine, and on Russians’ relationships with Ukrainians, can be broken down further into three primary prongs.

1. The Ukraine war is primarily about “rescuing” Russians and Russian speakers, especially (but not exclusively) in eastern and southern Ukraine. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is overseen by “fascists” and “Nazis,” who have been in power since the 2014 Euromaidan “coup.”
2. Russia and Ukraine are actually “brotherly” nations, and Ukrainians are simply “confused” about their relationship as subalterns to Russia. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia,” part of the “triune state” of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—and, naturally, not part of the West. The war is simply about restoring that Ukrainian status. It is also about restoring Russia’s colonial control of Ukraine and keeping Ukraine as an entity subservient to Russia.
3. “Ukraine” does not actually exist but is a Leninist fabrication. This is predicated on the idea that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet leadership were mistaken to draw any internal, republican borders within the Soviet Union—and that the entire “near abroad” is rightfully Russian. The war is about rectifying this Leninist mistake.

However, the Kremlin’s rhetoric explaining its war in Ukraine has often expanded far beyond Ukraine itself. Indeed, while the fighting might take place largely on Ukrainian (and occasionally Russian) territory, the Kremlin has often claimed that the war is both global and epochal, linked directly to the second broad bucket of narratives and focused on the status of Russia’s global standing. Those narratives centering on Russia’s role in the broader international context, as well as the creation of a new geopolitical order, can also be broken down into three primary threads.

4. This war is primarily about beating back NATO and Western expansion. NATO “pledged” in 1990 that it would not expand its borders, and this war is simply about forcing NATO to uphold that pledge. This war is a “defensive” war, aimed at preventing Russian “encirclement.”
5. This war is about the non-Western world standing up to Western bullying, hypocrisy, and decadence. Russia is at the vanguard of the non-Western world’s fight against Western “colonialism,” trying to restore “traditional values” that the West is attempting to destroy around the world.
6. This war is about restoring Russia’s status as a “great power,” both in Europe and globally. It is primarily about ushering in a “multipolar” world, with other “civilization-states” such as China and India rising to parity with the United States.

None of the narratives above are mutually exclusive. Indeed, one of the difficulties in assessing these narrative components is the multiple instances of reinforcing themes and topics. For example, the idea that Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations—or even the notion that Ukraine does not exist—can be directly tethered to the idea that NATO must never extend to Ukraine and that the war is necessarily defensive. The false claim that Ukraine’s 2014 revolution was in reality a coup is also often paired with the idea that the war is about rolling back Western influence and meddling in non-Western nations. These narratives can often work in conjunction—and are often included in the same speeches and writings from Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies.

Adding to the difficulty, many of these narratives are also in tension with one another. For example, Putin wrote at length about the supposed brotherly relationship between Ukraine and Russia, yet he has simultaneously claimed that Ukraine is a mere fabrication set to be annulled. Likewise, the idea that this is somehow an anti-colonial war grates against the claim that some countries are civilization-states destined to rule over smaller nations.

Still, each of these narratives is worth analyzing on its own. The remainder of this paper will be dedicated to just that: detailing the primary contours of each of these narratives, as well as offering analysis (and often corrections) therein. The paper will also offer a brief conclusion about what these competing and contradictory narratives reveal about Russia’s aims—and how best to combat Russian expansionism in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Russia’s relationship with Ukraine

1. The Ukraine war is primarily about “rescuing” Russians and Russian speakers, especially (but not exclusively) in eastern and southern Ukraine. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is overseen by “fascists” and “Nazis,” who have been in power since the 2014 Euromaidan “coup.”

Details

One of the primary narratives that Russia has relied on since its expanded invasion did not originate in February 2022, or even in the months beforehand. It instead traces back to at least early 2014, when Ukrainian protesters successfully ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych in the democratic Euromaidan Revolution—and when Putin launched Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in Crimea and parts of the Donbas.

At its simplest, Russia’s post-Euromaidan narrative boiled down to the idea that the Ukrainian protesters were illegitimate usurpers, ousting a democratically elected leader and instituting a new regime dedicated not only to wresting Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit but focused especially on the immiseration of Russians and Russian speakers. The “junta” responsible for this “coup” was secretly in hock to its “real masters in the West,” who were simply using Ukraine and its post-2014 government as a means of targeting Russia and Russian interests. In this view, these new Ukrainian leaders—including Volodymyr Zelenskyy—should be considered fascists and Nazis, simply because they were opposed to Russia writ large, whether that meant not recognizing Russia’s claims to Crimea or encouraging the use of the Ukrainian language throughout the country.

According to Russia, this supposed junta continued its persecution for years until things reached a breaking point in early 2022. That February, Moscow was supposedly forced to invade Ukraine for the express protection of Russians in regions like eastern Ukraine. As Putin claimed, Russia did not need to annex any further parts of Ukraine, but authorities in Kyiv needed to recognize the nominal independence of both the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic—building upon previous demands that these entities must also have a veto over Kyiv’s foreign policy decisions. According to Moscow, Ukraine also needed to renounce any fascist or Nazi leaders and sympathies forevermore.

As Putin said during his address announcing the expanded invasion, “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime.” As he added in 2025, the crisis did not begin with Russia’s invasion but was the “result of the coup d’etat in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West.” More specifically, Putin said in 2022 that Russia’s expanded invasion was a direct response to the “tragedy” in the Donbas. As Tass reported, Putin told a twelve-year-old girl that Ukraine’s “bombardments, artillery strikes and combat operations” in Donetsk and Luhansk “compelled Russia to start this military operation.”

Putin’s rhetoric also built on this narrative to call for the notion of “denazifying” Ukraine. As he memorably claimed during his February 2022 address, Russia would “seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.” The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian ambassador to the United Nations echoed this language.

Analysis

The idea that Russia needed to invade Ukraine in order to rescue compatriots and remove Nazi elements from Ukraine’s leadership is, to outside observers, perhaps the most farcical of the narratives detailed here. The notion that Ukraine—whose president is Jewish—requires denazification was immediately met with ridicule and mockery. However, this argument also provided a sense of flexibility for Putin. After all, it remains unclear what denazification would actually entail—whether regime change, full lustration, the ending of any pro-Western trajectory policies, a mix of these options, or something else entirely. Likewise, the call has a clear domestic component, with Putin able to sell the war as a battle against a new generation of supposed fascists and a reprise of Moscow’s victory in World War II.

The calls that Moscow must rescue ethnic Russians suffering in Ukraine, especially in the Donbas, also have significant salience for domestic audiences in Russia. For many Russians, the Donbas remains a traditionally Russian land and Moscow maintains a unique role in protecting Russians in neighboring nations—including beyond Ukraine. Given its salience, this line of argument would likely be employed again should Russia launch another invasion of a neighboring nation in the future, with potential usage from Estonia to Kazakhstan.

2. Russia and Ukraine are actually “brotherly” nations, and Ukrainians are simply “confused” about their relationship as subalterns to Russia. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia,” part of the “triune state” of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—and, naturally, not part of the West. The war is simply about restoring that Ukrainian status. It is also about restoring Russia’s colonial control of Ukraine and keeping Ukraine as an entity subservient to Russia.

Details

As with the narrative on Ukraine suffering a coup via fascists in 2014, the idea that Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations—and that they are destined for embrace, with Russia lording as the “elder brother” over Little Russia—long predated Russia’s 2022 expanded invasion. Indeed, such a narrative stretches back to at least the middle of the nineteenth century, when young Russian aristocrats “discovered” Ukraine and began “to work intensely to uncover the region’s supposed original Russianness,” wrote Johns Hopkins University’s Eugene Finkel, whose 2024 book traced the origins of such efforts. No longer was Ukraine a separate polity with a distinct history; by the 1830s and 1840s, as Russian Slavophile writer Aleksei Khomiakov noted, Ukraine was “an organic and inseparable part of a single Russian nation.” Russia and Ukraine, alongside Belarus, formed a supposed triune state, in which all three nations were part of one greater Slavic nation headed by Russia.

It is an idea that, nearly two centuries later, remains largely unchanged—and which helped provide the outline for one of Moscow’s prime narratives about why it needed to launch its expanded invasion in 2022. This narrative formed much of the basis for Putin’s lengthy 2021 treatise on the topic, in which he detailed the supposed “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” As Putin wrote:

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.

If anything, Putin’s beliefs in the historical unity binding Russia and Ukraine have only grown despite the military setbacks and massive casualty rates continuing to climb. In late 2022, Putin announced the supposed “annexation” of further Ukrainian territory, including territory Moscow had not yet even conquered. As a means of getting around this awkward fact, Putin pointed to the supposed unity already extant between Ukraine and Russia—found, naturally, in the land he was now claiming as Russia’s. As Putin said, those in Ukraine were “our compatriots, our brothers and sisters . . . the native part of our united people.”

Nor is it just Putin who has peddled such tropes. In a malicious, revelatory article originally posted on (and later removed from) RIA Novosti, one Russian writer laid out what Russian victory in Ukraine would look like. “Ukraine has returned to Russia,” the article begins. “It will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state as part of the Russian world . . . [Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine] will now act in geopolitical terms as a single whole.” Thanks to the invasion, “Russia is restoring its unity” via a “de facto civil war” waged by “brothers.” And thanks to Moscow’s victory, “Russia is restoring its historical completeness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together—in all its totality of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians [i.e., Ukrainians].”

Analysis

In this narrative, Ukraine and Ukrainians still exist in concept, but only as a nation and people subordinated to Russia and Russian sovereignty. It is, if anything, a vision that posits Ukraine as simply another Belarus: a state that retains nominal independence but is nonetheless tightly embraced by Moscow and subservient to the Kremlin’s demands. This, as Moscow sees it, is the natural state of things—and anything else would simply be a historical anomaly.

This narrative, of course, is chock-full of historic revisionism, outright fabrications, and warmed-over excuses for empire. As Finkel noted, Kyiv’s origins predate Moscow’s founding by centuries, and few if any Russian intellectuals ever considered Ukraine part of their history and identity until the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, this narrative grossly ignores what Ukrainians actually think—and blinded Moscow to just how fiercely Ukrainians would fight to preserve both their state and their nation moving forward.

3. “Ukraine” does not actually exist but is a Leninist fabrication. This is predicated on the idea that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet leadership were mistaken to draw any internal, republican borders within the Soviet Union—and that the entire “near abroad” is rightfully Russian. The war is about rectifying this Leninist mistake.

Details

This narrative flips the notion of a supposed triune state on its head. Instead of Ukraine being a constituent part of a greater Russia, there is no Ukraine whatsoever—and any claims of a separate Ukrainian nation, language, or identity are simply slander against the one, true, and indivisible Russia. It is a narrative that tips into the genocidal, giving Russia cover to try eliminating Ukrainian identity entirely.

As with other narratives mentioned above, the idea that Ukraine is not a separate polity but is simply a “project” meant to target and undercut Russia has a lengthy lineage. In the 1860s, Russian officials shunted the idea of Ukraine entirely to the side, claiming that the Ukrainian language “never existed, does not exist and cannot exist,” culminating in a tsarist edict banning the teaching of Ukrainian and marking the first instance of Russian authorities trying to stamp out the idea of Ukraine entirely.

The key inflection point in this narrative—that Ukraine is a mere fabrication, rather than a fraternal nation that has lost its way—came in the early 1920s, when Lenin and other Soviet higher-ups began outlining the borders of the new Soviet republics. Given the levels of support in Ukraine for Ukrainian nationhood, Soviet leadership granted Ukraine (and a number of other polities) republican status, effectively placing it on par with the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. For Putin and others, this decision was a “time bomb” that ultimately detonated in the Soviet Union’s dissolution and is a historic wrong that must be corrected.

We see elements of this narrative throughout Putin’s speeches and writings. In the same essay mentioned above about the supposed historical unity of Russia and Ukraine, Putin claims that “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era,” created “on the lands of historical Russia.” As he added when announcing the expanded invasion, “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia—by separating, severing what is historically Russian land . . . When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples, Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake.”

As such, the time had come to rectify that “mistake”—even to the point of destroying and subsuming Ukraine entirely.

Analysis

Putin might play-act as a historian, but his reading of history is saturated in grievance and mythmaking, cherry-picking facts and concocting details of his own. The idea that Ukraine is a fabrication or some facile project is, of course, belied by the fact that Ukraine and Ukrainians continue to exist and continue to fight back against Russian forces.

Moreover, Putin’s shoddy history is easily dismissed by those who have actually studied the region. As acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy noted, the idea that Ukraine exists on historical Russian lands is nonsensical. “Even a cursory acquaintance with the history of the Russian Revolution and fall of the Russian Empire that accompanied it indicates that the modern Ukrainian state came into existence not thanks to Lenin but against his wishes and in direct reaction to the Bolshevik putsch in Petrograd in October . . . of 1917,” Plokhy wrote. “The Bolsheviks tried to take control of Kyiv as well but were defeated, jumpstarting the process of the modern Ukrainian state-building.”

Putin is hardly the only Russian nationalist who has learned the hard way the peril of dismissing Ukrainian identity. During the Russian Civil War, the pro-tsarist White forces refused to grant Ukraine (among other nations) any political freedoms or sovereignty. They instead claimed they were fighting for “Russia, one and indivisible”—a cry that rallied few non-Russians and eventually doomed the White forces to defeat.

Russia’s global standing

4. This war is primarily about beating back NATO and Western expansion. NATO “pledged” in 1990 that it would not expand its borders, and this war is simply about forcing NATO to uphold that pledge. This war is a “defensive” war, aimed at preventing Russian “encirclement.”

Details

Not all of the Russian narratives backing the expanded invasion center on Ukraine. In fact, a number claim that Ukraine is simply the latest flashpoint in a far broader struggle Russia is waging against a perfidious West, and the United States in particular. A case in point is the claim that the war in Ukraine is not just about toppling Kyiv’s “regime,” or even preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, but that it is about unwinding NATO’s post-1991 gains and preventing the wholesale encirclement of Russia by Western forces.

Such a narrative came to the fore in the weeks leading up to the expanded invasion in early 2022. In December 2021, the Kremlin moved from demanding that Ukraine simply acquiesce to Russian demands (especially foregoing NATO membership) to demanding that NATO deployments leave much of Eastern and Central Europe entirely. Moscow specifically called for the removal of NATO forces and weapons from countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, and formally called for NATO to pull back to its 1997 borders, effectively abandoning Poland, Czechia, the Baltics, and others—and effectively restoring military parity between the United States and Russia in Europe.

The Kremlin has justified these demands by claiming that the United States pledged in the early 1990s not to expand NATO eastward. Putin has regurgitated these claims multiple times, including after Russia first launched its invasion in 2014, when the Russian leader stated that Western leaders “have lied to us many times . . . This happened with NATO’s expansion to the east, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders.” According to Putin, all NATO enlargement following the Soviet dissolution is invalid and must be rolled back. Preventing Ukraine from NATO membership is simply the first domino in a far broader effort to push NATO out of all of its newest member states.

Analysis

Putin’s claims that the United States pledged not to expand NATO are ahistorical and fabricated. The United States never pledged any such veto. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, then ruling as Soviet premier, attested to this, saying that the “topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not . . . brought up in those years.” Moreover, the key comment in question, in which Secretary of State James Baker floated the idea of NATO moving “not one inch east,” referred solely to NATO troops from West Germany moving into East Germany. The George H. W. Bush administration, however, never adopted this or any prohibition on NATO expansion as formal policy.

However, such a lie is a handy means of cultivating support among gullible audiences, both domestically and internationally, and helps present Russian aggression as being defensive in nature. Of course, this kind of framing—that invading a neighbor is not imperialism but is actually a defensive move—long predates Putin. It can be found in everything from the US decision to invade Mexico in the 1840s to Japan’s decision to invade much of Asia in the 1940s. This “defensiveness” was also the basis for much of the Soviet Union’s rationale for invading numerous neighbors, from Hungary in 1956 to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and beyond. Putin will almost certainly not be the last imperial leader to claim his country’s expansion is defensive in nature.

Thankfully, the Kremlin’s demands have been roundly dismissed by NATO and Western governments alike, and Ukraine remains dedicated to joining NATO. Yet the demands highlight how Russia has spun the war in Ukraine as a means not simply of thwarting NATO’s enlargement but of restoring a military parity between the United States and Russia on the European continent. It implies, in other words, an effective return to the Cold War military status quo within Europe and an unwinding of all the post-Cold War gains that have helped beat back malign Russian influence and military dominance in Europe, far beyond just Ukraine.

5. This war is about the non-Western world standing up to Western bullying, hypocrisy, and decadence. Russia is at the vanguard of the non-Western world’s fight against Western “colonialism,” trying to restore “traditional values” that the West is attempting to destroy around the world.

Details

While the war is taking place in Ukraine, this narrative posits that the war is about far more than simple NATO expansion or Ukrainian nationhood. Instead, it is about finally standing up to Western predation and perfidy, and to the West’s attempts to spread supposedly liberal values around the world—including all those elements opposing so-called traditional values.

Russia’s efforts to transform itself into a bastion of these supposed traditional values dates back at least a decade, when the Kremlin first began positioning itself as the primary bulwark for those opposed to liberal democracy. These include those opposed to LGBTQ rights, those opposed to so-called “gender ideology,” and even those opposed to democracy writ large. This effort has been largely successful, with Russia and Putin widely viewed as the lodestar for these anti-democratic forces.

The war in Ukraine, then, is simply a continuation on this theme. Announcing the expanded invasion in 2022, Putin claimed that the West “sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within.” Patriarch Kirill, one of the key spokesmen for Putin’s regime and the titular head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, echoed Putin’s claims that the war was predicated on those in eastern Ukraine “refus[ing] to accept the so-called values that are being offered by” the West, including “the gay parade.” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, one of the war’s biggest boosters, warned that Ukraine risked becoming “an LGBTQ capital or a venue for the Transgender Olympics.”

More broadly, the Kremlin has attempted to position the war as an effort to stand up to Western “neo-colonialism.” Ignoring centuries of Russian colonialism in Ukraine (and elsewhere), Putin has attempted to sell the war as a means of beating back Western colonial efforts. As he said when announcing the supposed annexations of multiple Ukrainian provinces in late 2022, “The West is ready to step over everything in order to preserve the neo-colonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, to plunder . . . Hence their aggression towards independent states, towards traditional values and original cultures[.]”

Analysis

It’s difficult to take seriously Russia’s claims that it is waging a war in Ukraine for traditional values, or that it has some kind of spiritual mission to beat back the encroachment of LGBTQ rights. After all, Russia is a country in which the rate of regular church attendance is in the single digits, while the country’s abortion rate remains higher than that of many other European nations. Moreover, the country routinely persecutes Christian denominations, even in Russia itself. The country is hardly a bastion of traditional values, despite Putin’s claims otherwise.

However, the claim that Russia is supposedly leading an anti-colonial war is perhaps the most farcical. Russia was a constituent part of the broader, ghastly story of European colonization, stealing lands and brutalizing populations from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to North Asia and Central Asia—and even joining Great Britain, France, and Spain in colonizing North America. Claiming it was spreading “civilization” and “Christianity” to “heathen” groups of “savages,” Russia’s colonialist claims were indistinguishable from those in European empires elsewhere. In other words, Moscow was as much a European colonizer as London, Lisbon, Brussels, or Paris.

This was true not just in Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Sakha, or Finland, but also in Ukraine, where Moscow—during tsarist, Soviet, and now Putin eras—routinely engaged in colonial behavior, from ethnic cleansing to cultural genocide to mass murder, all while claiming non-Russian lands as its own. The war in Ukraine is indeed colonial, but with Russia once more in the role of colonizer.

6. This war is about restoring Russia’s status as a “great power,” both in Europe and globally. It is primarily about ushering in a “multipolar” world, with other “civilization-states” such as China and India rising to parity with the United States.

Details

Arguably the broadest narrative propounded by Russian authorities is that the war in Ukraine is not about the status of certain Ukrainian provinces, or Ukrainian security arrangements, or even the size and status of NATO in Europe. It is instead about restoring Russia’s role as a supposed great power on par with a small number of other states that make up an exclusive club of nations dominating geopolitics. These nations include the United States, China, and potentially India, with Russia also seen as a natural member.

The Kremlin claims Russia’s rightful status as a great power has been dismissed by the West—and especially by the United States, which has preferred to oversee a unipolar world—but no more. In invading Ukraine, Russia has announced its permanent status as one of the supposed civilization-states in a new multipolar world. This is not to say that Russia is aspiring to global dominance, per se. Rather, Russia is aspiring to—and has already achieved—a role as one of the key geopolitical players internationally, regionally dominant and globally relevant. Ukraine remains firmly within Russia’s supposed sphere of influence and, as such, Russia should have the right to do whatever it wants within Ukraine with no outside interference.

This obsession with great-power status has long pervaded Putin’s rhetoric, infusing and inflaming Russia’s revanchism. In October 2022, when he announced Russia’s supposed annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, Putin claimed that Russia is “a great millennial power” and a “country-civilization” that will follow its own path. In March 2023, Putin signed a strategic blueprint outlining Russia’s “historically unique mission” as a “unique state-civilization.” As Uppsala University’s Igor Torbakov wrote, it was the first time that Russian leadership had “officially stated that Russia is a sui generis civilization.”

Much of this narrative has manifested in specific calls for a “new Yalta,” in which leaders in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington effectively carve up the world, Ukraine included. In such a scenario, Russia would be the modern equivalent of the United Kingdom: an empire that might not be quite as powerful or wealthy as the other two nations, but that nonetheless deserves a place at such a summit. “Putin has never hidden that his dream is a new Yalta . . . [to] establish a new world order,” writes journalist Mikhail Zygar. Russia’s Ukraine war—and its supposedly imminent victory—is merely the opening salvo in a far broader global reordering. As the much-maligned RIA Novosti article mentioned above claimed, the invasion of Ukraine meant that a “new world is being born before our eyes”—a world that Russia will help steer.

Analysis

This pretension to greatness hardly began with Putin. Years before Russia’s expanded invasion, the Kremlin and Russian intellectuals were long obsessed with “the pursuit of derzhavnost,” which scholar Seva Gunitsky translates as “both being a great power and being recognized as such by others.” Not only does this mean acting as a regional hegemon, but it also means being entitled to “an unquestioned sphere of influence.” This rhetoric—of Moscow’s “special mission” and its “historic destiny” as a “great power”—stretches back centuries and was evident in the Kremlin’s tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet history.

It is perhaps ironic, then, that little has done more to expose the hollowness of Putin’s claims than his invasion of Ukraine. Rather than restore Russia’s great-power status, the war has led not just to the degradation of the Russian economy and outright military disaster in Ukraine but to Russia’s weakening influence in the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and, of course, Europe more broadly. It has likewise forced Russia to rely on North Korea to shore up national security, and to lean on China to shore up Russia’s teetering economy.

The war has only accelerated Russian decline and undone, perhaps for good, the potential restoration of Russian greatness. Moscow might still maintain its status on things like the United Nations’ Security Council and might still be the only post-Soviet state with nuclear weapons. But the idea that Russia is, or will soon become, a great power is increasingly laughable—and a testament to what a disaster Putin’s rule has been for Russia.

Conclusion

Wars can often contain multiple narratives. The US invasion of Iraq, for example, was originally pegged to removing Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction program before it shifted to fostering “democracy” for Iraqis. The US Civil War was originally launched to restore the sovereignty of the federal government before it shifted to eliminating slavery within the United States entirely. A war with multiple narratives does not necessarily portend either success or failure.

Rare are those wars, however, that push as many competing narratives as Russia has peddled in Ukraine. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of another war that has seen so many different justifications from the invading party. And it’s difficult to identify another war that has seen such a massive difference in scale of what those narratives are proposing, from simple territorial shifts to the entire reordering of the state of global affairs.

But as we’ve seen above, this is precisely what Russia has attempted with its invasion of Ukraine. From protecting pockets of Russians in the Donbas to ushering in an entirely new geopolitical era, from restoring a supposed Slavic unity to eliminating liberal values, the Kremlin’s justifications for its war have been breathtaking in their breadth.

They have also been a confused, muddled mess and a testament to just what a fiasco Russia’s entire war has been for Moscow. Instead of a clear-cut series of goals and aims, Russia’s leadership has flailed for excuses for its invasion, tossing idea after idea into the ether to see what might succeed. Such narrative confusion has stemmed, in large part, from Russia’s overall failures in Ukraine, forcing the Kremlin to reach for more and more justifications as the war drags on. At the same time, the confusion has played a significant role in Russia’s overall strategic failures in Ukraine and elsewhere; without a clear set of strategic goals, there’s little reason to think that tactical or battlefield successes would follow. Of course, much of this is also predicated on the Kremlin’s historical myopia as it pertains to Ukrainian history and Ukrainian nationhood; rather than a constituent part of some kind of Greater Russia, Ukraine is a distinct polity with a unique, separate history—a reality that hundreds of thousands of Russians have now died to learn. While Russia might continue to occupy sections of Ukrainian territory, the Kremlin has all but assured that a heavily armed Kyiv remains Russia’s greatest geopolitical foe for decades to come, if not longer.

For those looking forward, all this narrative confusion highlights one thing: there’s little reason to think Putin will be satisfied with simple recognition of Russian sovereignty over places such as Donetsk or Kherson. As Russian authorities have claimed, this war is about far more than the status of certain sections of eastern Ukraine, or even about Ukrainian membership in NATO. The Kremlin has far broader, and far more destabilizing, goals than simply dominating Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, or even necessarily toppling Kyiv. Ukraine is but a stepping stone to Putin’s far more sweeping goals of rolling back US and allied interests, reaffirming Russian dominance over all of its neighbors (China and North Korea excepted), and creating a world in which the rights of smaller nations are subject to the whims of a handful of great powers. Given Putin’s ongoing obstinacy about winding down the war and finding a so-called “off-ramp,” it is clear that, for him, this war is about far more than simply the territorial status of parts of eastern or southern Ukraine.

It is, indeed, a reflection of the Kremlin’s obsession with derzhavnost—an obsession of which Ukrainians have done everything they can to disabuse Russia. And it reflects the fact that what can end this war is not the status of places like Crimea or Donetsk oblasts, but a full and outright defeat of Russia. Anything less would simply tempt the Kremlin to try again—with another effort to upend the global order and another war to try making Russia great again.

Casey Michel is an author and journalist who writes extensively on international corruption, kleptocracy, national security, and Russia policy. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other outlets. His 2021 book, American Kleptocracy, was named by the Economist as one of the “best books to read to understand financial crime,” and his 2024 book Foreign Agents was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the “biggest foreign-policy book releases of 2024.” His next book, United States of Oligarchy, will be released in summer 2026.

He is based in New York, and is currently sanctioned by the Russian regime for his work.

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In Washington, the House of Representatives marked the moment by voting through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which includes the repeal of sanctions on Syria under the 2019 Caesar Act. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on Thursday, potentially unlocking billions of dollars of investments—much of it from Saudi Arabia—that could contribute significantly to Syria’s economic revival. That follows al-Sharaa’s historic visit to the White House in November as the first Syrian leader ever in the Oval Office, where Trump promised support.

But this past Saturday, a member of Syrian security forces—an individual set to be fired for suspected links to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—killed two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter in an ambush. It was an unsettling reminder that dangers for al-Sharaa and his international supporters lurk underneath all of Syria’s progress.

Still, few Americans are paying much attention to those events, with so much else dominating the news, including the possibility that a Venezuelan dictator might soon fall in their own hemisphere. In Saudi Arabia, however, officials are embracing al-Sharaa’s rise—and shrugging off his terrorist past—as nothing less than a historic opportunity to ensure that Syria doesn’t again fall prey to the Iranian adventurism and regional chaos that has long stymied progress in the Middle East.

During my recent visit to Riyadh, a Saudi official, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, compared the US lifting of Syrian sanctions to “giving a suffocating person an oxygen mask.” “We need to give Syrians a trickle of hope, and speed is of the essence,” the official explained, given the urgent need to head off any new feelings of despair and discord in the country. And the need is urgent. Damascus, for instance, gets only around three hours of electricity each day, and there is not enough housing for the many displaced and returning Syrians. More than a million Syrian children are without schools, and millions more Syrians need health care in a country where many hospitals have been destroyed by targeted bombings.

Why the Saudis are invested

For Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Syria until recently had been a missing piece in a larger regional design. What Riyadh wants is to construct an integrated Arab economic and security space that stretches from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. Central to this goal is a secure and prosperous Syria that denies Iranian and extremist influence.

Syria, which was once the cradle of Arab culture and civilization, has in recent decades contributed to Middle East instability, including by providing Iran a platform and a corridor for its proxy wars in Lebanon, Israel, and Yemen. So, it’s understandable why Riyadh is now interested in helping ensure a secure, moderate, modernizing, and Saudi-anchored “new Syria” that replaces the sanctioned, fragmented, failed state that Syria had become.

Riyadh already has announced more than six billion dollars in Syrian investments this year, from housing and health care to energy and infrastructure. Gulf money has helped clear Syria’s arrears to the World Bank, paving the way for International Monetary Fund and World Bank teams to return to the country for the first time in more than a decade.

The Saudi official told me that embracing Syria also has an emotional dimension for Saudis. Many of their country’s most prominent families have their roots and take their names from Syria, which has provided so much of Arab literature, poetry, and the arts. Even al-Sharaa himself was born in Riyadh in 1982 into a middle-class Sunni Syrian family, his father an oil engineer and his mother a geography teacher.

Al-Sharaa’s life story tracks the region’s upheavals. His family returned to Damascus when he was seven years old, and there his neighbors remember him as a polite young man who worked in his father’s grocery store. Al-Sharaa has said that the second Palestinian intifada against Israel, which began in 2000, radicalized him, and he then traveled to Baghdad in 2003 to join the al-Qaeda terrorist group after the US invasion of Iraq. US forces captured him and imprisoned him between 2006 and 2011. Al-Sharaa’s release coincided with the Syrian revolution against Assad, during which al-Sharaa created the al-Qaeda-backed Al-Nusra Front in 2012, using the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani. 

The US State Department listed him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in May 2013, and al-Julani thereafter remade himself as the nationalist rebel commander of the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the city of Idlib. In November 2024, his forces caught the world and Syria’s government by surprise, racing through Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and finally Damascus, forcing Assad to flee to Russia.

Western governments that had long treated al-Sharaa as a terrorist have come to embrace him in the past year as Syria’s best hope. He is the beneficiary of Turkish sponsorship, American optimism, and Saudi ambition. “We’ve all decided to give him the benefit of the doubt because there really is no other alternative,” the Saudi official told me.

Why the Israelis are worried

Israel sees the situation differently, putting it at odds with Washington. Trump views al-Sharaa as a potential partner in containing what’s left of Iranian influence, combating new terrorist threats, and reintegrating Syria into the world after more than a decade of civil war. Israel worries about the dangers of a premature normalization with al-Sharaa, a former jihadist commander who is now in charge of a fragile, heavily armed state on its northern border. As evidence for this concern, Israeli officials point to recent video of Syrian soldiers chanting that Gaza is a “rallying cry” and vowing “from your blood, rivers will flow.”    

Israeli jets and missiles have struck post-Assad Syria over the past year more than six hundred times, targeting remnants of Iranian forces, Hezbollah infrastructure, and what Israelis see as new threats emerging under al-Sharaa’s rule. Israeli troops have also moved deeper into a demilitarized buffer zone along the Golan Heights, citing Israel’s national security needs. Saudi Arabia isn’t waiting for the United States and Israel to resolve their differences. Riyadh sees this as a now-or-never moment for a country at the center of its regional aspirations. Bin Salman appears to have convinced Trump that Syria risks sliding back into extremism, instability, and insurgency unless the Arab world, Turkey, and the United States move quickly to help the young Syrian leader stabilize the country.

What to make of al-Sharaa

For Syria itself, the stakes are of a historic nature. At the Doha Forum earlier this month, al-Sharaa told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about his goal of building a “sustainable, safe, and secure future for the Syrian people.” He spoke about reaching out to Alawite, Druze, and other minority communities, noting that all parts of Syrian society were victims of the Assad regime, and all were part of the revolution that ousted it. Al-Sharaa also emphasized the importance of establishing the rule of law in Syria, which he said is “the way to guarantee everybody’s rights and the rights of all minorities.” Finally, he promised a four-year transition, a new constitution, and elections.

Al-Sharaa is saying all the right things. Given that he has transformed himself so often and so thoroughly already, it would be understandable to treat his words with skepticism. At the same time, al-Sharaa’s adaptability could serve him in rising to this historic moment and, most urgently, in implementing a domestic agenda that fulfills the new Syria he describes. Success would not only transform his country. Many Saudis believe that a Syria in line with this vision would contribute to Lebanon’s rebirth and to a more secure and prosperous Jordan, as well. 

Yet one year after Assad’s fall, the existential challenges facing the new government are many. Much of Syria still lies in ruins, more than 70 percent of Syrians still need humanitarian aid, and outbreaks of sectarian violence persist. Intent on playing spoiler to al-Sharaa’s vision for Syria are various militant and terrorist groups, including ISIS, which has plotted to assassinate the Syrian president. 

From Saudi Arabia, the stakes could not be clearer. Syria can either become the first success story of a new Middle East economic and security order, or it could be the setting for its next failure. 

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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In a sharp decrease from the past level of military assistance for Ukraine, the NDAA includes $400 million in funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) for new arms intended for Ukraine for 2026 and 2027. To put this into context, the April 2024 Ukraine supplemental aid bill included nearly $14 billion in USAI funding.

Even so, the bill is a significant step given that Washington has ended almost all direct assistance to Ukraine. The Trump administration still holds billions in authority for USAI but hasn’t made use of the program, instead opting to sell arms to Ukraine via European allies.

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In June, the Department of Defense redirected 20,000 anti-drone air defense interceptors specially made for Ukraine under USAI to Israel and US forces in the Middle East. Congress is now using the NDAA to make it more difficult for the Pentagon to repeat this, while also requiring that any arms redirected into US stocks are ultimately replaced for Ukraine.

Though Congress doesn’t expect the White House to make use of USAI in the near future, the NDAA modifies the program so that these funds will now remain available until 2029. As the Trump administration looks for ways to both revitalize the US defense industrial base and provide Ukraine with credible security arrangements, USAI could make a return as a useful way to bolster Ukraine’s defenses.

During 2025, the Trump administration has sought to pressure Ukraine with the prospect of withholding US intelligence support. The NDAA creates strict new reporting requirements to discourage any such moves. As recently as November, the White House said that unless Kyiv agreed to a new US proposal to end the war, it would stop sending weapons and providing the intelligence Ukraine uses in its defense, including to detect Russian air raids.

The new legislation requires the US Secretary of Defense to submit reports to Congress within 48 hours of any decision to “pause, terminate, or otherwise restrict or materially downgrade intelligence support, including information, intelligence, and imagery collection,” to Ukraine. This does not concretely prevent the administration from ending intelligence support, but it is a clear signal from Congress that any action to do so would be met with sharp political backlash.

The NDAA also creates significant new reporting requirements related to the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), the primary mechanism for arms sales to Ukraine. In order to increase the transparency of the PURL system, Congress will use its oversight power to mandate quarterly reports.

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The NDAA includes the Abducted Ukrainian Children Recovery and Accountability Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) to support efforts to locate, return, and rehabilitate Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. The mass abduction of Ukrainian children has united Republicans and Democrats in Washington. In early December, Congress held a hearing with Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States and experts working to rescue and rehabilitate abducted children.

The bill authorizes the State Department and Department of Justice to assist Ukraine in locating and returning Ukrainian children as well as prisoners of war and civilian detainees, and to support the rehabilitation of returned children and seek accountability for the Russians who abducted them. It also authorizes the Secretary of State to provide support to Ukraine’s government and civil society groups in providing rehabilitation services for victims.

The NDAA includes the best legislative support from Congress that Ukraine has received all year. At the same time, it also underscores the dramatic reduction in overall US support for Ukraine during 2025.

As it stands, unless Congress exercises its foreign policy powers, efforts to end Russia’s invasion will be stymied by limited US assistance to Ukraine. However, there are some signs that Congress is taking critical steps forward. Recently, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) reportedly worked with Democrats to advance a discharge petition to force a vote on Russia sanctions and potential new military assistance to Ukraine. If passed, new Russia sanctions could deliver a much-needed shot in the arm to the Trump administration’s peace efforts.

While it includes measures that will be welcomed by Kyiv, the NDAA’s Ukraine provisions are largely about mitigating potential harm from the Trump administration. In order to provide significant new material assistance to Ukraine, Congress will need to advance other legislation that it has so far kept on ice while awaiting approval from the White House.

Doug Klain is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and the deputy director for policy and strategy at Razom for Ukraine, a nonprofit humanitarian aid and advocacy organization.

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Zelenskyy’s commitment to democratic principles is commendable, but he should nevertheless resist international pressure to rush into wartime elections. Attempting to hold a national vote at a time when the country is under relentless Russian bombardment and while millions of Ukrainians remain displaced by the war would not be a demonstration of democracy; it would be a strategic blunder that could hand a propaganda victory to Moscow.

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The issue of potential wartime elections in Ukraine has been raised on numerous occasions since spring 2024 when Zelenskyy’s presidential term officially ended, with Russia frequently referencing the absence of elections in Ukraine as part of efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the current Ukrainian authorities. These Kremlin claims of illegitimacy are inaccurate. The Ukrainian Constitution specifically forbids elections while martial law is in place, which has been the case in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

This constitutional barrier to wartime elections is not a mere legal loophole or a convenient excuse. It is a foundational safeguard designed to ensure the continuity of governance during times of national crisis. Of course, it is possible to argue that the relevant legislation could be revised. But any attempt to change the Ukrainian Constitution would risk a constitutional crisis in the middle of a major war. It would divert the attention of Ukraine’s parliament, the country’s judicial system, and the public away from the war effort, with obvious potential for political infighting and domestic instability.

The constitutional arguments against a wartime election are convincing, but the main reason why Ukraine cannot go to the polls while the Russian invasion continues is because any such vote would fall far short of recognized democratic standards in terms of freedom, fairness, and representation. A truly democratic election requires a level playing field, security for participants, and the ability for all eligible citizens to cast their ballots. None of these conditions can be met in today’s Ukraine.

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Security problems alone should be enough to rule out the idea of a wartime ballot. With Russia bombing civilian targets across Ukraine on a daily basis, candidates would be unable to stage any public campaign gatherings in safety. Likewise, polling stations would become high-value targets for Russian drones and missiles, creating unacceptable risks for thousands of election workers and millions of voters.

The logistical challenges of a wartime vote would be similarly overwhelming. Millions of Ukrainians are currently located abroad as refugees in the European Union and elsewhere. Millions more are internally displaced inside Ukraine. This creates huge issues for voter registries, which would need to be completely revised and updated. Furthermore, the voices of Ukrainian citizens living under Russian occupation would be silenced entirely, disenfranchising a large portion of the overall electorate and further undermining the credibility of any vote.

If Zelenskyy chooses to proceed with a wartime election, the potential for domestic political destabilization would be huge. An election held under wartime conditions would inevitably be a flawed process, with millions unable to vote and security restrictions placing limits on meaningful campaigning opportunities. Regardless of the outcome, Russia would seize on these flaws in order to declare the results illegitimate, sow internal discord, and undermine the credibility of the Ukrainian government in the eyes of the international community. The resulting instability could prove a far greater threat to Ukraine’s survival than any perceived democratic deficit.

According to his country’s constitution, Zelenskyy is the legally elected leader of Ukraine and will remain so until conditions in the country allow for the relaxation of martial law restrictions and the organization of genuinely free and fair elections. This will only become possible once a comprehensive and verifiable ceasefire is in place. Until the bombs stop falling, the Ukrainian government’s priority must remain the defense of the nation.

Ukrainians are fighting to defend their democracy against Russian authoritarianism, but they are also in no rush to hold a wartime vote. Instead, opinion polls consistently demonstrate that most Ukrainians oppose the idea of any elections while active hostilities continue. When the right moment arrives, Ukrainians will be the first to demand their democratic rights and will insist on new elections. However, they understand that the right moment has not yet arrived.

Yuriy Boyechko is CEO of Hope For Ukraine.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 10, 2025

Russian drones and blackouts test the resilience of Ukraine’s second city

By Maria Avdeeva

With Putin’s army now advancing to the east and the Russian bombardment of civilian targets intensifying, Kharkiv residents are now facing what may become the most difficult winter of the entire war, writes Maria Avdeeva.

Defense Technologies Drones

UkraineAlert Dec 11, 2025

Russia’s insistence on a defenseless Ukraine betrays Putin’s true intentions

By Peter Dickinson

Russia’s key demands during US-led peace talks all appear designed to leave Ukraine disarmed and defenseless. This is a clear indication of Vladimir Putin’s intention to continue his invasion and complete the conquest of Ukraine, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Dec 9, 2025

Europe’s choice: Fund Ukraine now or pay a far higher price if Russia wins

By Elena Davlikanova, Lesia Orobets

Europe’s reluctance to pay for Ukraine’s defense is shortsighted, write Elena Davlikanova and Lesia Orobets. If Russia’s invasion succeeds, Europe will soon have to boost defense spending to levels that would completely dwarf the current cost of backing Ukraine.

Conflict European Union

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post The only winner from Ukrainian wartime elections would be Putin appeared first on Atlantic Council.

All of this unfolded against the backdrop of a new administration in Washington that has been unafraid to shake up decades of US diplomatic conventions.

As 2025 comes to a close, our senior analysts at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs unpack the most prominent trends and topics they are tracking for the new year.

Khalid Azim: Three trends shaping the economic landscape

Gissou Nia: Demands for justice—and protests driven by the thirsty

Karim Mezran: North Africa is a rising priority for US policy

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: Key questions remain for Palestinians

Victoria J. Taylor: Iraq must maintain unprecedented stability

Daniel B. Shapiro: A political transition in Iran approaches

Nathanael Swanson: Will the Israel-Iran cease-fire hold?

Jonathan Panikoff: A duality of possible trajectories

Three trends shaping the economic landscape

Three major macro trends will shape the Middle East and North Africa in 2026, each carrying profound implications for the region’s economic trajectory.

1. The pressure of lower energy prices
As energy revenues soften, governments across the region will be forced to make more disciplined, risk-adjusted investment decisions. The era of abundant fiscal cushions is shifting toward one that requires sharper prioritization, operational efficiency, and a clearer sense of expected returns. This will test policymakers’ ability to allocate capital effectively and to reduce long-standing subsidies and support for entrenched constituencies. These choices become even more consequential as a growing cohort of young people demand economic opportunity, purpose, and social mobility.

2. Rising debt and the cost of ambition
Fiscal tightening will coincide with an accelerating need for investment. Across the Gulf, governments are committing billions to data centers, artificial intelligence ecosystems, new power generation, and other foundational infrastructure. These projects will increasingly be financed through borrowing, especially as the current account deficit grows. The result will be higher debt levels and rising debt-servicing costs. Countries that clearly articulate their economic value proposition and demonstrate credible reform will have a competitive advantage in the capital markets. Those that do not may face steeper financing costs and slower momentum in their diversification strategies.

3. Vision 2030 ten year anniversary: A regional bellwether
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has already reshaped the kingdom’s economic and social landscape through diversification, investment in future industries, and the creation of a more open and optimistic society. The plan’s tenth anniversary in 2026 marks a critical milestone, not only for the kingdom but for the region. The next decade will be defined not by the wealth beneath the ground, but by the wealth of human talent above it. How effectively the kingdom transitions from resource-driven growth to human capital-driven growth will influence the MENA region’s competitiveness for a generation.

Khalid Azim is the director of the MENA Futures Lab at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Related reading

MENASource

Nov 20, 2025

Saudi Arabia’s next horizon: Building human capital beyond Vision 2030

By Khalid Azim

Riyadh still needs to take fully support small and medium-sized enterprises—the true engines of job creation.

Economy & Business Middle East

Demands for justice—and protests driven by the thirsty

In 2026, expect to see more widespread protest movements for change across the Middle East and North Africa fueled by climate change and authoritarian mismanagement. Analysis of global protest movements in 2025 focused heavily on the young age of the protesters. While youth demographics have gained relevance as new communication tools have emerged over the last decades (in 2011, it was Twitter organizing the youth in the “Arab Spring”; in 2025, it’s the gaming app Discord organizing Morocco’s “Gen Z” protests), the evergreen undercurrent is frustration with corruption and elites. Resources have become scarcer due to global warming and authoritarian mismanagement, and the globe has become increasingly and overtly transactional as it shuns diplomacy in favor of kinetic means and “might is right” politics. The Middle East and North Africa are profoundly impacted by both these negative trends. With water running out in Tehran and water instability around the Nile Basin and the Tigris and Euphrates River, expect the next wave of regional protests to be driven not just by the youth, but by the thirsty.

Regional victim and survivor-centric demands for justice will also continue to grow in 2026 in countries that are emerging from conflict, experiencing government transitions, or where restive populations wish to usher in a change of rule. There is no clearer example than in Syria, where Assad’s exit one year ago opened the space for a new Syria and where a previously exiled network of Syrian lawyers, researchers, and advocates now work on transitional justice processes from inside their own country. In Iran, where the population is publicly demanding regime change, victims of protest violence, executions, and custodial deaths have organized powerful advocacy groups to demand that international processes deliver justice where domestic courts are unable and unwilling to do the job. And across the region, while many governments have been complicit in the violence in Gaza, the Arab street stands at odds with those governments and instead has demanded—alongside much of the world—that the perpetrators of the violence in Gaza be held to account.

Gissou Nia is the director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council.

Related reading

MENASource

Dec 8, 2025

States shouldn’t waste the chance to establish a Syria Victims Fund

By Kate Springs, Celeste Kmiotek

A centralized fund would better support victims of international law violations in Syria, who face unique challenges.

Democratic Transitions International Norms

North Africa is a rising priority for US policy

North Africa is poised to move closer to the center of US regional policy for 2026. The past year of quiet US engagement, including the work of US President Donald Trump’s Senior Advisor Massad Boulos, is beginning to reduce tensions and open political space. Algeria and Morocco are edging towards some degree of a detente, creating space for practical steps on the Western Sahara file.

Additionally, Libya may see modest but meaningful progress. Headway on an agreement between the divided governments on a unified development funding mechanism may reduce parallel spending and put less pressure on the dinar, as well as release the funds for long-awaited reconstruction and modernization projects. The decision to include Libyan units from both east and west in AFRICOM’s Flintlock 2026 special operations forces exercise suggests an incremental movement on military unification in Libya, an area where US diplomacy with key partners has grown more active.

Egypt will remain an integral partner as Washington tries to deal with situations in Gaza, states located on the Red Sea, and Sudan. At the same time, renewed attention to commercial diplomacy signals a shift toward advancing US business interests across North Africa.

Taken together, these dynamics make the region harder to overlook and suggest that 2026 may be the year North Africa becomes a sustained policy priority in Washington.

Karim Mezran is the director of the North Africa Initiative and resident senior fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council.

Related reading

MENASource

Oct 3, 2025

US, Italy, and Turkey alignment could push the needle in Libya

By Frank Talbot and Karim Mezran

The US, Italy and Turkey can—through balanced diplomacy—reinforce the economic opportunities presented by institutional unification in Libya.

Italy Libya

Key questions remain for Palestinians

This was a tectonic year of realignments for the Palestinian people, as well as their heavily divided and largely powerless leadership. Next year is likely to be equally important and trend-setting—and four major threads have emerged that could shape its trajectory.

For Palestinians and what’s next for Gaza, the top four trends to look for in 2026 are the following:

1. The Trump administration’s commitment to the Palestinian issue and its willingness to engage the Palestinian Authority, which remains subject to US sanctions and restrictions. Will elements of a comprehensive peace deal between Palestinians and Israelis, like the one that Trump proposed during his first term, return?
2. What becomes of the Gaza cease-fire that the United States and international players are hoping to cement into a lasting peace deal that transforms the coastal enclave? The year 2026 is either going to be one in which Hamas is disarmed and fundamentally changed—or it will be one in which the Palestinian terror group continues to dominate Gaza’s affairs and prevent substantive change to revitalize the decimated Strip after two years of devastating warfare.
3. The prospect of Saudi-Israeli normalization—which could unlock immense potential for the kingdom, the Palestinians, Israel’s regional integration, and a regional anti-Iran coalition—is enormous. The year 2026 will set the tone for whether Saudi Arabia proceeds with integration based on its often-stated requirement for Palestinian statehood, or if this ends up in further stalemate and stagnation.
4. The fourth critically significant trend to watch is the impact the Gaza war and Israel will have on influencing voters in the upcoming midterm elections. As with the Trump election, this issue increasingly played a role in rallying US voters to the ballot box, including the high-profile race to elect New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani. The year 2026 will reveal whether this trend persists or if it is a fad that passes once the Gaza war comes to a more permanent end.

Ultimately, 2026 will either mark the end of the Gaza war and the initiation of reconstruction and hope in the Strip—or it will perpetuate a state of stagnation and stalemate, risking a return to fighting, devastation, and more tragic deaths.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is the director of Realign For Palestine at the Atlantic Council.

Related reading

MENASource

Nov 10, 2025

A little-discussed point in Trump’s Gaza plan could be an opportunity to build interfaith understanding

By Peter Mandaville

Peace efforts don’t need more gleaming Abrahamic baubles, they need a genuine commitment to supporting grassroots religious peacebuilding.

Civil Society Freedom and Prosperity

Iraq must maintain unprecedented stability

Amid continued regional turmoil, Iraq ended 2025 in a period of relative stability and security, avoiding being drawn into the Twelve Day War between Israel, Iran, and the United States—and holding successful parliamentary elections. The challenge for Iraqi political leaders in 2026 will not only be to maintain this unprecedented stability, but also to navigate Trump administration pressure to rein in Iran-aligned militias and avoid being pulled into the broader US maximum pressure campaign against Iran. Iraq is also likely to continue its efforts to appeal to the Trump administration through investment, pitching new energy deals to US companies, but it is not yet clear whether these efforts will be successful.

With Iranian influence in the region at an all-time low, Iraqi leaders have an opportunity to forge a more independent foreign policy that prioritizes continued partnership with the United States and differentiates Iraqi from Iranian interests. Core to this effort will be progress toward Iraq’s regional integration and strengthened political and economic ties to the Gulf and other regional partners such as Jordan and Egypt. In the face of Iraqi efforts to challenge the militias and strengthen partnerships with the United States and the Gulf, 2026 may bring attempts by Iran and Iran-aligned militias to act as spoilers who obstruct Iraq’s progress and imperil Iraq’s stability. Iraq’s next prime minister has an opportunity to transform the country.

The next year will be critical in determining whether the Iraqi government can seize the opportunity and whether the United States and other regional partners will support it in doing so.

Victoria J. Taylor is the director of the Iraq Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East program.

Related reading

Dispatches

Dec 10, 2025

Dispatch from Iraq: The biggest challenge awaiting the country’s next prime minister

By Victoria J. Taylor 

A recent visit to Iraq following parliamentary elections reveals a growing divide between the political elite and the people.

Elections Iraq

A political transition in Iran approaches

Political transitions are hard to predict, but there is no doubt Iran is approaching one. With a frail, unpopular, eighty-six-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei nearing his actuarial and conceivably political limits, 2026 could be the year.

Any transition has the potential to unleash dramatic changes in Iran, across the region, and in relations with the United States. The potential positive implications of new Iranian leadership and a change of approach are massive: relief from brutal suppression for the Iranian people, new possibilities in nuclear diplomacy and toward normalization with the United States, broadened detente with Iran’s Arab neighbors, and an end to the arming of violent terrorist proxies across the region that have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars of Iranian resources—driven by an ideological crusade to destroy Israel—while the Iranian people endure manmade water and electricity shortages. The beneficial effects would be felt from Iran to Lebanon to Gaza to Yemen and beyond.

None of this is preordained or automatic. A transition could cement a new generation of the Islamic Republic’s clerical leadership, bring to power an even more hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or devolve into chaos and civil war with massively destabilizing effects. What Washington should engage in through 2026 is transition planning—not in order to cause a regime change, which must be left to the Iranian people, but to be prepared to provide support for the Iranian people, resources and expertise, potential sanctions relief, and coordination with international partners to assist in steering a transition when it comes toward one of the better possible outcomes. The United States has moved smartly in 2025 to support a stable Syrian transition, and while the jury is still out on long-term stability there, there has been significant progress. An even more consequential transition awaits in Iran. Washington must not be caught flat-footed.

Daniel B. Shapiro is a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.

Will the Israel-Iran cease-fire hold?

Following the Twelve Day War in June, Iran retains large quantities of highly enriched uranium and advanced centrifuges, without oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency. At the same time, while Iran’s missile program and support for nonstate proxies were diminished, Iran is rebuilding its capabilities and still threatens US, Israeli, and regional security.

After initially declaring Iran’s nuclear program obliterated, Trump has also repeatedly called for resumed negotiations and a new nuclear deal with Tehran. Although still nominally implementing the US “maximum pressure” campaign, Trump also made a high-profile gesture by inviting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to the Gaza Peace Summit in October.

For its part, Iran appears to remain in a largely reactionary posture. It is attempting to rebuild its missile and defense capabilities but is not currently enriching uranium or advancing its nuclear program (that we know of). Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Iran is open to talks at the United Nations, but also foolishly rejected the Cairo invitation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded by reminding the world of the Iranian missile threat and increasingly targeting Iranian proxies. There is no written cease-fire in place, and continued peace is partially reliant on Trump holding Netanyahu back. As Israeli elections approach, will Trump’s “complete and total ceasefire” hold? Will Iran do something that gives the Israeli’s an excuse or opportunity to re-engage Iran militarily? Or will Iran give negotiations another chance? Either way, 2026 should make for a pivotal year for Iran.

Nathanael Swanson is a resident senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.

Related reading

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Nov 17, 2025

As elections loom, can Netanyahu balance Trump, Mohammed bin Salman, and his political future?

By Daniel B. Shapiro

The Israeli prime minister’s preferred path to survive a treacherous election will be to show Israeli voters that he is advancing their country’s regional integration and staying within the US president’s embrace.

Israel Middle East

A duality of possible trajectories

2026 is a year of potential opportunity—and potential peril—for the Middle East.

Gulf states are determined to advance their political, economic, and security autonomy. Syria and Lebanon could either emerge as models of forward movement from instability or revert to sectarian strife and conflict. Pockets of normalcy could continue to advance in Iraq as exists today in parts of Baghdad and other cities, or it could descend back into political stasis and conflict. Israel could find itself more secure in the region by continuing to undertake kinetic strikes, or it could choose the path of less violence by completing meaningful security and cease-fire agreements with its neighbors. Choose the wrong option, however, and Israel could find itself more vulnerable to threats on its borders, not less. Palestinians could find space to grieve and begin to rebuild after two years of devastation—or face continued violence from West Bank settlers and a renewed war in Gaza, as well as some intra-Palestinian conflict. Jordan and Egypt will continue to muddle through their economic challenges and associated domestic social and political pressures, or this will be the year that they face collapse, and the world will look back and say the warning signs were there, we just missed them. 

Most of the region has an opportunity at this moment in which it can seize and advance its desire for greater autonomy, global influence, and further integration. The Middle East can envision a calmer, more prosperous region driven by technological opportunity across sectors, including by leveraging artificial intelligence and US-exported advanced chips, while taking advantage of the economic integration pathways that are being developed, such as IMEC.

But the duality of possible trajectories laid out above reflects that in the Middle East, more often than not, positive opportunities are interrupted by internal or exogenous factors that regional capitals have to manage in a manner they did not expect. How the region grapples with the enduring and emerging risks of 2026 will determine whether it can prosper as a whole or whether only some will thrive while many continue to struggle. But if those regional countries that are advancing economically, politically, socially, and in their security only look inwards and do not seek to stabilize their neighbors facing social and physical insecurity, they will risk the latter impeding their development, as well. And then 2026 will once again be a year of missed regional opportunities instead of progress.

Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

The post What will 2026 bring for the Middle East and North Africa? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s territorial claims alone should be enough to set off alarm bells. He insists that in order to secure a ceasefire, Ukraine must first hand over the remaining 10 percent of the Donbas region that his troops have failed to seize since the invasion first began eleven years ago.

As the ruler of what is by far the largest country in the world, Putin has no pressing need for the approximately 6600 square kilometers of Donbas territory still under Ukrainian control. Nor does the region contain any particularly important natural resources or historic sites that could justify its present position at the very heart of the peace process.

Putin’s true motivation is not difficult to discern. The unoccupied portion of the Donbas that he now so openly covets may seem relatively inconspicuous on the map, but it plays host to some of Ukraine’s strongest fortifications. Developed over the past decade, this fortress belt represents a formidable obstacle to Moscow’s invasion.

Analysts estimate that it could take years for Russia to occupy the area by force, and would likely cost the Kremlin hundreds of thousands of additional casualties. Beyond the fortress belt, the way would be open for further sweeping Russian advances into central Ukraine and toward Kyiv itself. This vital role in Ukraine’s overall defense explains why Putin is prepared to reduce his demands elsewhere but remains so eager for Kyiv to hand over this particular territory without a fight.

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.

Among Moscow’s many demands, the biggest red flag of all is the Kremlin’s determination to demilitarize Ukraine and deprive the country of international allies. Ever since the first round of peace talks during the initial months of the war, Putin has consistently sought to impose restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military and the categories of weapons the country can possess. While recent drafts envision a Ukrainian army of 600,000 troops, the fact that Russia remains so keen on limiting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself is an unambiguous signal of Putin’s bad intentions.

Likewise, the Kremlin’s bitter opposition to continued international support for Ukraine betrays the reality behind Moscow’s current peace posturing. This extends far beyond Russia’s well-documented objections to Ukrainian membership of NATO. Putin’s negotiators also seek to block future arms supplies to Kyiv and have completely ruled out the possibility of even a symbolic Western troop presence in postwar Ukraine, while demonstrating a deep reluctance to accept anything resembling credible security guarantees.

Attempts to defend Russian objections on security grounds are unconvincing. Putin has debunked his own claims of a NATO security threat to Russia by reacting with obvious indifference to neighboring Finland’s NATO accession in 2022, just months after using the issue as a convenient pretext for the invasion of Ukraine. According to this bizarre Kremlin logic, Ukraine’s slim hopes of joining NATO in the distant future were sufficient grounds to unleash the largest European war since World War II, but Finland’s almost immediate membership of the alliance was “no problem” for Moscow, despite the fact that both countries share long land borders with Russia.   

Putin’s refusal to countenance purely defensive commitments from Kyiv’s allies that are clearly designed to safeguard Ukrainian sovereignty is even harder to justify. If the Russian ruler intended to coexist with an independent Ukraine, he would surely recognize the need for international involvement in efforts to reestablish stability in the region. Instead, he has adopted the opposite approach. While Ukraine appeals for security guarantees, Putin seeks to guarantee Ukraine’s insecurity.

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Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

The insincerity of Russia’s current approach to the US-led peace process should come as no surprise. After all, while Putin may be willing to consider a pause in hostilities if it comes on Kremlin-friendly terms, he simply cannot risk a peace deal that secures the continued existence of an independent Ukrainian state. Any settlement based on the present front lines of the war would leave around 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to continue along the path toward greater European integration. That is exactly what Putin is fighting to prevent.

The Kremlin dictator has always viewed his war against Ukraine in the broadest of historical contexts as a crusade to reverse the verdict of 1991 and return Russia to its rightful place as a global superpower. Like many of his contemporaries, Putin remains embittered by the Soviet collapse and determined to avenge what he perceives as modern Russia’s humiliating fall from grace. This has fuelled his obsession with independent Ukraine, which he has come to regard as the ultimate symbol of the historical injustice resulting from the breakup of the USSR.

Putin’s increasingly rabid opposition to Ukrainian independence reflects his Cold War experience as a KGB officer in East Germany, where he witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Empire firsthand. This traumatic experience has helped to convince him that the Ukrainian state-building project now poses an existential threat to Russia itself. If Ukraine is able to consolidate its statehood and emerge as a recognizably European democracy, Putin fears this could serve as a catalyst for the next phase in a Russian imperial retreat that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Over the past two decades, Putin’s determination to undermine Ukrainian statehood has come to dominate his entire reign and has led directly to a new Cold War. From the 2004 Orange Revolution to the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of 2022, Ukraine has been at the epicenter of each new milestone in the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West.

Time after time, Putin has demonstrated his readiness to sacrifice all other Russian national interests in his quest to subjugate Ukraine and force the country permanently back into the Kremlin orbit. He has reversed decades of integration into Western economies, placed Russian society on a wartime footing, and sent hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers to their deaths. It is deeply delusional to think that he is now suddenly ready to abandon all of this and accept the reality of Ukrainian independence in exchange for the marginal gains of a compromise peace.

Putin’s own position during peace talks betrays his complete lack of interest in ending the war. His territorial demands would rob Ukraine of crucial fortifications and set the stage for further Russian advances, while his calls for restrictions on the Ukrainian armed forces and Kyiv’s ability to maintain military ties with the West would leave postwar Ukraine disarmed and defenseless. In isolation, any of these demands would look deeply suspect. Taken together, they represent overwhelming evidence of Putin’s intention to continue the invasion.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 9, 2025

Europe’s choice: Fund Ukraine now or pay a far higher price if Russia wins

By Elena Davlikanova, Lesia Orobets

Europe’s reluctance to pay for Ukraine’s defense is shortsighted, write Elena Davlikanova and Lesia Orobets. If Russia’s invasion succeeds, Europe will soon have to boost defense spending to levels that would completely dwarf the current cost of backing Ukraine.

Conflict European Union

UkraineAlert Nov 27, 2025

While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree this week calling for an escalation in efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Human Rights

UkraineAlert Dec 4, 2025

Ukraine’s warning to the West: A bad peace will lead to a bigger war

By Myroslava Gongadze

It is delusional to think that sacrificing Ukraine will satisfy Russia. Instead, a bad peace will only lead to a bigger war, while the price of today’s hesitation will ultimately be far higher than the cost of action, writes Myroslava Gongadze.

Conflict Corruption

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Russia’s insistence on a defenseless Ukraine betrays Putin’s true intentions appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Women in Afghanistan are now campaigning to end gender apartheid in their country. In this series, women from South Africa and Afghanistan come together to reflect on the parallels between their struggles and to draw strength from the experiences of those who have fought before them. In the second article of this series, South African journalist and activist Zubeida Jaffer joined Tamana Zaryab Paryani, a human rights activist from Afghanistan and founder of the Stop Gender Apartheid Campaign, for a conversation on resilience amid resistance to systems of oppression that spanned continents and generations.

In their respective countries, Jaffer and Paryani have both endured detention, torture, and threats of sexual violence meant to silence them. But what truly unites is their commitment to a resistance that is rooted in community, courage, and healing aimed at putting an end to apartheid regimes. The fight against apartheid in South Africa was not only a political struggle, but a movement sustained by bravery, perseverance, and collective action that helped dismantle a system designed to erase them. Today, women in Afghanistan resisting the Taliban’s gender apartheid are drawing lessons from that history.

‘Young people have a unique energy’

Jaffer began by recounting her story. As a young reporter at the Cape Times during South Africa’s apartheid regime, she was only twenty-two when in 1980 she was detained after reporting on a police shooting. Held in prison without trial, she was physically assaulted, psychologically tortured, and threatened with sexual violence. After two months of pretrial detention, she was released and charged with possession of a banned book.

Instead of retreating, Jaffer leaned deeper into the work of resistance, leaving her job at the Cape Times to become an anti-apartheid activist and unionist. In 1986, after editing community and trade union papers, she was detained again—this time, while she was several months pregnant. She was released shortly before her baby’s birth, only to be rearrested nine weeks later and jailed again with her infant. Held in solitary confinement and denied medical care, she nearly lost her child.

Holding up the cover of her memoir, Our Generation, Jaffer shared a photo from the book with Paryani, pointing to an image of her as a young mother with her infant daughter. The fight against apartheid, Jaffer said, was not just about individual acts of bravery but also about the collective defiance of women—young and old, mothers and daughters—that contributed to the system’s fall. “Looking back now, despite the pain,” Jaffer said, “I am proud to have been part of something that resulted in the freedom of all South Africans. It was worth it.”

Since then, Jaffer has written three books, and she now has her own website and runs a program where she mentors young journalists and gives them the opportunity to write on a multimedia website. Jaffer played a key role in South Africa’s first democratic elections as part of the Independent Media Commission.

Jaffer reflected on the power of youth, which she said carried with it fearlessness, the sense of justice, and the belief in change. “Young people have a unique energy,” she said.

‘The world turned a blind eye’

Paryani, a twenty-seven-year-old activist from Kabul, has become one of the most visible faces of Afghanistan’s protest movement. Following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Paryani, alongside her sisters, took to the streets of Kabul to protest the regime’s decrees banning girls from attending school and imposing repressive dress codes on women. Together, they chanted “naan, kaar, azad”—bread, work, freedom—a slogan that has since become a powerful symbol for the resistance of Afghan women, both inside the country and in exile.

Her defiance carried a heavy price. In January 2022, a video of Paryani went viral on social media in which armed men pound on her door while she pleads shakily, “Come back in the morning. My underage sisters are with me, come tomorrow. I cannot talk to you now.” Her plea went unanswered; Tamana and her sisters were taken. No one knew where they were, and the Taliban denied detaining them.

Like many women in Afghanistan, Tamana and her sisters were forcibly disappeared—snatched from their homes in the middle of the night, sometimes with their children, sometimes with their husbands and entire families. In prison, she was separated from her sisters, beaten, psychologically tortured, and threatened with sexual violence. Under intense international pressure, they were released in February 2022 but were silenced with threats and had their passports confiscated. 

After several attempts to leave the country, in October 2022 Paryani and her family managed to flee to Germany, where exile brought safety but not peace. In exile, she has continued to fight for global awareness of the gender apartheid imposed by the Taliban. In 2023, she staged a hunger strike in Cologne to draw attention to the plight of women in Afghanistan, which ended with her hospitalization. Her struggles have left her with a lingering sense of abandonment: “I tried everything to draw the world’s attention to the struggle of women in Afghanistan,” she said. “And the world turned a blind eye.”

The trauma she endured in Afghanistan continues to surface, she said, even more acutely now that she is no longer in survival mode. She added that she frequently wakes from nightmares filled with the cries of those she heard being executed in the prison in Kabul after dawn prayers. 

Passing the torch

As Paryani spoke, her voice broke. “Will I live to see the liberation of my country?” she asked.

Jaffer responded by telling Paryani that healing is not a luxury, but a necessity. “You have been in the belly of the beast,” she said. “You have endured what many fear the most. The scariest and cruelest part is behind you. Now you must take care of yourself—not just for your own survival, but so you can continue to lead this movement.”

Jaffer told Paryani that one of the biggest mistakes she had made when she was younger was trying to carry on without seeking help. The trauma, left unaddressed, eventually caught up with her. “It paralyzed me,” she said. “Had I known then what I know now, I would have begun healing much earlier.”

The struggle for liberation, Jaffer insisted, is not a sprint. It is a long, painful journey, said Jaffer, and it demands not only courage and sacrifice, but also reflection, self-care, self-love, and resilience. And most importantly, she added, it requires community. 

“Tamana,” Jaffer said, “don’t let what they did to you silence you. Share your story. Ask for help. Simplify the message so others can join. Personalize your struggle. Your pain is real, but it’s also powerful. It can move hearts and minds. And this pain will carry you towards what you are burning for—liberation.”

Paryani, who had arrived at this meeting with her notebook and pen, eager to absorb every tip and tactic to end gender apartheid, now wept uncontrollably. Not out of sorrow, but because she was confronting a difficult realization: dismantling gender apartheid takes time. While it demands sustained activism and a burning passion, it equally requires the continuous inner work of healing—the labor that builds not only resistance, but the resilience that is necessary to sustain it.

Farhat Ariana Azami is a social worker and advocate for the rights of women and girls, as well as refugees. She serves as president of the Afghanistan Solidarity Group, an Austria-based association that provides homeschooling for girls and develops sustainable livelihood projects for women in Afghanistan.

This article is part of the Inside the Taliban’s Gender Apartheid series, a joint project of the Civic Engagement Project and the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project.

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In October alone, Russia bombed Kharkiv more than eighty times. Many of these attacks involved different categories of drones, reflecting the changing nature of the war. Russia now relies mostly on a mix of first-person view (FVP) drones, loitering munitions, Shahed drones, and guided aerial bombs. These weapons systems are all far cheaper and faster to produce than missiles, making it easier for the Kremlin to maintain the intensity of the bombardment and destabilize the life of the city.

The recent appearance of FVP drones within the city limits has created an additional layer of unease for the approximately 1.3 million people currently living in Kharkiv. Technical modifications introduced in 2025 have increased the range of Russian FVP drones, enabling them to reach Kharkiv and nearby settlements previously regarded as relatively safe. This has dramatically altered the threat environment, pointing to a continued escalation in Russia’s use of drones against urban populations.  

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.

As the bombardment of Kharkiv intensifies, events taking place one hundred kilometers to the east are reshaping the city’s broader security outlook. In recent months, advancing Russian troops have attempted to reoccupy Kupiansk. This strategically important city came under Russian occupation during the initial phase of the full-scale invasion before being liberated during Ukraine’s successful September 2022 counteroffensive. Renewed Russian gains in this direction would further strain Ukraine’s defenses and expand the aerial threat looming over Kharkiv.

As the front line creeps closer to Kharkiv, the main threat remains air strikes. Russian attacks focus on civilian targets including energy infrastructure, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, and shopping malls. The overall intention is clear: Russia aims to degrade municipal infrastructure, disrupt essential services, and make the city unlivable for its inhabitants.

One of the most shocking attacks in recent months took place on October 22, when Russia carried out a targeted drone strike on a Kharkiv kindergarten. On that occasion, images of firefighters carrying young children from the burning building made global headlines. However, the vast majority of attacks targeting the Kharkiv population do not attract the attention of international audiences. 

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Alongside drones, Kharkiv residents must also now contend with extended periods of darkness. In early November, a major Russian bombardment caused the city’s energy supply system to collapse, leaving entire districts without electricity, heating, and light. Local residents have had to adapt to the realities of life without power while navigating the city in the winter gloom. For the Kharkiv population, this has meant returning to familiar blackout routines developed during earlier Russian winter bombing campaigns.  

Despite these pressures, Kharkiv continues to function and maintain an air of normality. Everyday life in the city is in many ways defined by a culture of resilience that is both practical and disciplined, reflecting years of adaptation under fire.

Utilities crews repair power lines within hours of each new Russian attack. Municipal workers immediately clear away debris from air strikes and make sure the city remains tidy, even in the most extreme of circumstances. Teachers hold classes in specially constructed underground schools or metro stations. Doctors treat patients behind boarded up windows. Each individual demonstration of resilience is a direct rejection of Russia’s efforts to depopulate Kharkiv.

In order to maintain this remarkable resilience, Kharkiv requires continued international support. Most of all, this means additional air defenses. Supporting Kharkiv is not just a matter of humanitarian assistance. It is a strategic investment in European security.

Today, Kharkiv serves as a vital bastion in eastern Ukraine. The city’s endurance makes it possible to reinforce Ukrainian front line units, bolster the country’s defenses, offer a safe haven to the region’s civilian population, and prevent the war from spreading further west. A secure Kharkiv means a stronger Ukraine and a safer Europe, but this will only be possible with help from the international community. 

Maria Avdeeva is a Ukrainian security analyst. The views in this article are her own and are expressed in a personal capacity. 

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 9, 2025

Europe’s choice: Fund Ukraine now or pay a far higher price if Russia wins

By Elena Davlikanova, Lesia Orobets

Europe’s reluctance to pay for Ukraine’s defense is shortsighted, write Elena Davlikanova and Lesia Orobets. If Russia’s invasion succeeds, Europe will soon have to boost defense spending to levels that would completely dwarf the current cost of backing Ukraine.

Conflict European Union

UkraineAlert Nov 27, 2025

While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree this week calling for an escalation in efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Human Rights

UkraineAlert Dec 4, 2025

Ukraine’s warning to the West: A bad peace will lead to a bigger war

By Myroslava Gongadze

It is delusional to think that sacrificing Ukraine will satisfy Russia. Instead, a bad peace will only lead to a bigger war, while the price of today’s hesitation will ultimately be far higher than the cost of action, writes Myroslava Gongadze.

Conflict Corruption

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

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Accounts of human rights abuses in Iran are so frequent and so well-documented that it’s easy to gloss over how much worse things are for the country’s minority populations. They face both official discrimination and day-to-day prejudice. Moreover, after June’s Twelve Day War between Israel and Iran, the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran found that Kurds, Balochis, Arabs, and other minorities faced disproportionate arrests, penalties, and executions inside the Islamic Republic. This follows a predictable pattern: Whenever the regime feels under threat internally or externally, it tightens the screws on minorities. This intensifies resentment felt in those communities, thus creating a vicious circle. The regime’s paranoia about threats to national security from these groups risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

As Western policymakers and analysts try to discern possible futures for Iran—be it after the leadership of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or potentially post-Islamic Republic—they should pay attention to the peripheries of the country. Most analysts point out that a regime overthrow or a revolutionary uprising remain unlikely scenarios. The regime is powerful, despite its unpopularity—and the state is more deeply established than in most Middle Eastern countries. Nevertheless, instability cannot be ruled out, and it is worth considering scenarios for Iran’s minority regions should the highly centralized security state become distracted by a power struggle or an external conflict.

Iran’s minority communities

The experiences and aspirations of Iran’s minorities are not all the same. How far people identify as Iranian and how much as another nationality varies widely, making population statistics imprecise. Broadly, ethnic Persians are believed to be between 50 and 60 percent, Azerbaijanis between 16 and 20 percent, Kurds 10 percent, Baloch and Arabs 2 percent each, and there are also small populations of Turkmen, as well as others. Minorities can be counted in many different ways.

Of these groups, Kurdish national identity in the northwest of Iran has a long history, including in the modern era with the short-lived Republic of Mahabad in 1946 and the violent suppression of Kurdish autonomy after the revolution in 1979. Meanwhile, Arabs in Khuzestan are keenly aware of how little they benefit from the province’s oil wealth and that government mismanagement has left their water resources depleted. The Baluchi population, which is largely concentrated on the border with Pakistan, suffers socioeconomic deficits, as well as structural exclusion (as both an ethnic and religious minority). Hundreds of thousands of them have no official documents, which excludes them from school and the workplace, as well as political life. And the largest linguistic minority, the Azeri-speakers, have a complicated relationship with the majority Persian population. Under the Islamic Republic, this previously well-integrated community has developed an increasingly separate identity—energized by the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991 and its successive bouts of conflict with Armenia. When fans of the Tractor Tabriz football team riot, as they regularly do, they chant not only the phrase “death to the dictator,” but also jibes against ethnic Persians. Yet Azerbaijanis are not excluded from the inner circles of power in Iran—President Masoud Pezeshkian is one, and even Khamenei hails from that community, although he does not identify as such. 

The response to the Twelve Day War

The Islamic Republic’s internal messaging in the wake of the Twelve Day War was somewhat confused. On the one hand, the regime singled out minorities for repression and allegations of espionage. On the other, it sought to portray a nation united and defiant under attack. In the rather heavy-handed propaganda after the war, this has even extended to drawing on pre-Islamic Persian national myths.

Ironically, the prevalence of this very Persian nationalist iconography risks looking mono-ethnic and further alienating minority populations. Yet senses of identity are hard to pigeonhole in Iran as elsewhere: Anyone who has talked to people from these areas knows that it’s possible to be, for example, Kurdish, Arab, or Azeri, resentful not to have schooling in your mother tongue, and mistrustful of the centralized Islamic Republic, and yet still identify proudly as an Iranian.

In recognition of these tensions, Pezeshkian and his government have stressed inclusiveness in Tehran’s nationalist messages since the Twelve Day War. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Pezeshkian said, “even if we had made no achievements in this war, the fact that it united the nation in defense of territorial integrity was the greatest achievement for us.” And interestingly, the government has also announced plans for a decentralization of powers to provincial governors.

That latter initiative is significant: Anything that looks like federalism has been stamped out by the Islamic Republic (right from the early days when it was on the agenda of some of the groups who joined the revolution). The constitution is firmly unitary, so even figures like former President Mohammad Khatami, who mused about the virtues of federalism during his term, concluded it was not possible. And sure enough, even Pezeshkian’s timid moves towards allowing governors more powers to implement policy locally have been condemned as “federalist” by hardline critics. Yet, these moves are evidence of a nervousness at the center about the risks of unrest and the need to appease minorities.

There isn’t much true separatism or irredentism in Iran’s minorities, although their ethnic identities are cross-border. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, for example, contains a spectrum of views about what self-determination looks like, but its mainstream aspiration has shifted over the years from independence to some form of autonomy within the framework of the Iranian state. Cultural and linguistic rights are particularly important for all of these minorities.

The local development agenda is also relevant here. For example, the staggering mismanagement of Iran’s water usage over the years has recently led to acute problems across the country. While this has long been a problem in underdeveloped provinces, only now is water scarcity impinging on the capital. For local Iranian Azerbaijanis, for example, the drying up of Lake Urmia and its environs is blamed on national policies and is thus intertwined with their political grievances towards Tehran. It would be natural for populations that already feel marginalized by the center to believe that they could do a better job if they managed their own affairs.

The Islamic Republic did, in fact, make progress in its early decades in leveling up regional inequalities by investing in rural education and development, but more recently, centralization, corruption, the domination of the economy by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and sanctions have overwhelmed any sense in the peripheries that Tehran has their interests at heart. That is the context in which Pezeshkian’s initiative to devolve powers to governors makes sense. 

Growing distrust of the regime’s competence

The greater risk for the regime may be the general collapse of belief in the regime’s competence and political will to do more than look after its own survival. That is true across the country. But in areas with strong local identities and long-standing grievances, it likely would not take much for charismatic local leaders to emerge and challenge the center—not necessarily on an overtly ethnic or cultural platform, but on one of good governance. 

A number of things would need to apply for that to happen. If the central government remains united and the IRGC and Basij militia stay loyal to whichever regime is in place, these centrifugal tendencies will have little scope to grow. Genuine steps towards decentralization could take the heat out of local resentments. A rapprochement with the West and a degree of sanctions relief could bring a new lease of life for regime legitimacy. But analysts and Western policymakers should not assume any of these. 

And if the regime’s central authority does indeed falter and bonds holding the unitary state together are loosened, the situation could snowball rapidly. All these groups have, or have had, armed factions willing to take on the regime in one way or another. On the one hand, Iran might be set off on a pathway to a new, federal settlement that allows greater civil and cultural rights to all its people. But perhaps more likely, a forceful reaction from the center could lead to prolonged conflicts and more radicalization on both sides. In that case, it is easy to imagine support coming from over Iran’s borders to support specific resistance groups, whether from governments or nonstate actors. 

Few would want to see such a situation. Regional governments would rapidly feel the effects of instability in Iran and may well prefer a unitary, if threatening, Islamic Republic to a failed state on their doorstep. Europe could face a refugee flood dwarfing the earlier waves from Syria during its decade-long war. The emergence of ungoverned space in Iran would invite the emergence of radicalization and terrorism, and the history of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan suggests this would lead to transnational threats. Nevertheless, for those in the diaspora whose ideological commitment is to the end of the Islamic Republic regime at all costs, or for some in Israel who might see a failed state as a satisfactory outcome, this scenario may not be unwelcome.

All of which suggests that now is the time for Western and regional policymakers to form a clear-eyed view of what such a fragmentation would mean, and how they should engage with Iran’s minorities—both now and through any regime transition. 

Rob Macaire is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project advisory committee and a former British ambassador to Iran. 

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Since 2014, Ukraine’s power grid, banking system, telecommunications networks, and digital infrastructure have faced sustained and increasingly sophisticated attacks. Yet these systems continue to function, adapt, and evolve, offering the world one of the most comprehensive case studies for how national infrastructure can endure under unrelenting cyber-kinetic pressure.

Ukraine’s experience reveals clearly that defending critical infrastructure is no longer simply a matter of cybersecurity. It requires a fundamentally different approach grounded in cyber-physical resilience, decentralization, system redundancy, institutional autonomy, and the capacity to sustain essential services, even when networks fail.

Industrial control systems were not designed for modern cyber warfare. The systems that operate electrical substations, power distribution logistics, and grid balancing typically prioritize availability and uptime rather than cyber defense. Russia exploited this structural vulnerability in 2015 and 2016, when Ukraine became the first country in history to suffer a nationwide power outage triggered by a cyberattack.

The same attacks that exposed digital fragility also revealed Ukraine’s greatest source of strength: Analog resilience. Even as digital control systems were compromised, engineers were able to manually isolate impacted grid segments, reroute power, and restore transmission through mechanical overrides and localized network segmentation.

The lessons are clear. While digital modernization delivers efficiency, full digital dependency creates systemic brittleness. Meanwhile, resilience can be enhanced through layered systems that incorporate manual fallbacks, localized control, and the ability to physically outmaneuver a digital attack. And while the ability to manually connect electricity to an electrical substation was not by design, the lack of digitalization at the time of the attacks proved to be an advantage in terms of service restoration speed.

The global takeaway from Ukraine’s grid defense is not a rejection of modernization; it is a rejection of exclusively digital modernization. True resilience requires hybrid architectures in which digital innovation is paired with analog redundancy, segmented control, and last resort options when networks are taken down. 

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.

If the Ukrainian power grid demonstrated the value of technical redundancy, Ukraine’s banking sector has shown the value of institutional autonomy. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has emerged since the onset of Russian aggression as one of the most effective national actors in defending and sustaining critical infrastructure under attack. This has not only been due to advanced cybersecurity measures, but also thanks to operational freedom to act in line with the pace of the threat environment. The NBU has rapidly introduced mandatory security protocols, created a dedicated incident response unit, synchronized directly with law enforcement, and deployed real-time regulatory updates to address emerging vulnerabilities. 

This capacity for decisiveness has helped ensure continuity in one of the country’s most essential sectors. Even under sustained digital attack, Ukrainians could still access their bank accounts, make electronic payments, and rely on national financial infrastructure without systemic interruption.

The most innovative aspect of this resilience came in the form of the Power Banking Initiative, a nationwide network of bank branches retrofitted for operational continuity during extended outages. Equipped with alternative energy sources, satellite communications, secure cash storage, and offline transaction capacities, these branches ensured uninterrupted access to currency, transfers, and basic banking services during power blackouts and infrastructure disruptions.

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Ukraine’s experience confirms that the boundary between cyberattacks and conventional warfare is often blurred. In many cases, the two elements are sequenced, synchronized, and structurally interdependent. Cyber operations can blind infrastructure sensors, disrupt communications, compromise operational decision-making, and erode trust in essential systems, often in direct coordination with physical strikes. 

Resilience does not depend on preventing breaches, but on the ability to sustain essential services when breaches succeed. This requires a hybrid framework that integrates digital security, infrastructure continuity planning, and decentralized operational responses.

Alignment with EU and NATO standards will accelerate interoperability with allied infrastructure defense systems and enable long-term investment security. Compliance must move beyond voluntary adoption to formal certification, standardized auditing, and enforceable resilience benchmarks for infrastructure operators.

Ukraine’s national bank has shown the importance of sector-specific response units. This model should expand to the energy, telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, and regional government systems. In order to be effective, response units require independent monitoring authority, 24/7 threat detection, digital forensics, and integration into NATO and EU cyber fusion hubs.

Infrastructure resilience also demands institutionalized public-private intelligence sharing. A legally protected, mandatory, real-time intelligence exchange will shorten detection timelines and prevent cascading failures. Critical infrastructure owners must integrate into national security information-sharing with liability protections, rapid alert systems, and reciprocal intelligence flows.

Looking ahead, a national resilience investment fund should pool Ukrainian government resources, EU support, World Bank guarantees, EBRD/EIB financing, and private capital to enable infrastructure segmentation, micro-grid deployment, backup power systems, secure cloud environments, and hardened data centers. However, none of these technical investments will succeed without sufficient human capital. Ukraine should aim to develop a minimum of 10,000 new security specialists through university partnerships, military-civilian pipelines, veteran reskilling programs, and national cyber reserves.

Today, Ukraine possesses infrastructure resilience tested continuously under real cyber-kinetic attack. This unique experience should form the basis of international efforts to enhance critical infrastructure resilience. Ukraine can lead an international training center, host multinational resilience exercises, publish attack anatomy case files, and shape new NATO and EU doctrine. This would allow Kyiv to position itself not only as a defender, but as an architect of resilient infrastructure strategy.

Dr. Oleksandr Bakalinskyi is a Senior Researcher at the G. E. Pukhov Institute for Modeling in Energy Engineering at the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine. Maggie McDonough is the Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at the Baltimore Development Corporation.  She was previously affiliated with the Purdue Applied Research Institute (PARI) and Purdue’s Center for Education & Research in Information Assurance and Security  (CERIAS), where she served as a technical advisor on global cyber security resilience programming.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 4, 2025

Ukraine’s warning to the West: A bad peace will lead to a bigger war

By Myroslava Gongadze

It is delusional to think that sacrificing Ukraine will satisfy Russia. Instead, a bad peace will only lead to a bigger war, while the price of today’s hesitation will ultimately be far higher than the cost of action, writes Myroslava Gongadze.

Conflict Corruption

UkraineAlert Nov 27, 2025

While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree this week calling for an escalation in efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Human Rights

UkraineAlert Dec 4, 2025

Russia has learned from Ukraine and is now winning the drone war

By David Kirichenko

Ukraine’s more agile army and vibrant tech sector initially gave the country an edge in the drone war against Russia, but Moscow has now regained the initiative thanks to an emphasis on mass and training, writes David Kirichenko.

Conflict Defense Industry

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.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

The post Ukraine’s wartime experience provides blueprint for infrastructure protection appeared first on Atlantic Council.

He recalls holding his wife as she recited the Tashahhud before the gas and the airstrikes that followed “erased all life,” and he later lost a second wife to another strike during the siege.

This September, sitting in his workshop that he rebuilt from the rubble, Khaled told one of the authors that he is working hard to restart the furniture business that once sustained his family. After years in Idlib and Turkey, he has returned to Eastern Ghouta—strictly driven by what he calls a “simple hope for peace and stability,” and a vow to “do whatever it takes to rebuild” his devastated town.

His suffering, he says, would be worth reliving “so long as it means I get to rebuild this country.”

One year since Assad’s fall and amid the steepest US development aid cuts in decades, Syria—a country that for over a decade was regarded as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the modern century—stands to have the most potential to showcase how local ownership, civil society, and a grassroots focus can accelerate reconstruction.

As is the case in many other parts of the region that have endured years of conflict, invasion, and destruction, Syria’s real infrastructure today is not physical, but human—the one thing that cannot be replaced, bypassed, or shortchanged by aid or the deficit of it. Syrian civil society must be a central architect to Syria’s rebuilding—not an afterthought to anyone’s investment. Today, the future of development rests not in big donor money or foreign aid but in a country’s most valuable asset: its people.

A 2017 State Department evaluation of Syrian civil society projects highlighted “local buy-in and ownership are key to project success in the short and long-term.” The evaluation recommended that there should be “consistent opportunities” for civil society organizations and grassroots communities to “provide input” to the project at hand from the get-go regarding community needs, training topics, and feedback throughout the project’s life cycle. For a country with a pre-war economy of roughly $60 billion, and whose physical reconstruction alone the World Bank now estimates at around $216 billion, Syria represents not just a humanitarian obligation, but a momentous opportunity to reimagine how investment, local ownership, and rebuilding can go hand in hand—setting an example for the rest of the Middle East and North Africa region, where tragically other conflicts linger in Gaza, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan.

One year on from the start of life in a post-Assad Syria, the country faces a historic moment to set a regional example anchored in the most durable, valuable, and scalable asset of any nation, which remains its civil society.

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The second year of a post-Assad Syria requires structural reform, victim-centered leadership, and international reinforcement.

Democratic Transitions International Norms

Rebuilding in Syria

In just the first few months since Syria’s emergence on the international stage, the country signed more than $14 billion worth of major investment agreements with regional and international companies—including investments from European donors, Gulf states (such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar), multilateral banks, and private companies that have moved into the country’s reconstruction sector. This includes the $5.8 billion in grants and loans pledged at the 2025 Brussels conference to the expansion of economic engagement with Turkey, the hundreds of millions of dollars in new Gulf-backed port and industrial-zone deals that are still a fraction of the roughly $216 billion the World Bank estimates full rebuilding will require.

Saudi Arabia, whose de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman is a key backer of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government, signed forty-seven investment agreements and memorandums of understanding at the July 2025 Saudi-Syrian Investment Forum. Most of these investments are focused on rebuilding Syria’s infrastructure across various sectors, including transportation and construction—especially residential—as well as energy, maritime, and industry.

However, what’s indispensable to any form of sufficient, scalable, and sustainable development is that these public and private actors treat local Syrian councils, civic organizations, educators, and technicians as co-designers, facilitators, and contract partners.

Civil society as Syria’s greatest asset

These sectors provide a unique opportunity for engaging local actors in Syria. This includes the civil society organizations and community leaders that played a prominent role in maintaining basic services and key development projects amidst the horrors of the country’s civil war.

The White Helmets represent a key example. The humanitarian grassroots organization was formed in Aleppo and the surrounding countryside, saving civilian lives under perpetual airstrikes and shelling by the Assad regime and clearing the rubble and debris afterward, all at a time when no international aid could reach them. Their role grew into successfully repairing roads, reconnecting water networks in rebel-held districts, and providing key services to Syrians, including health and training to local community members.

It therefore came as no surprise that their founder, Raed Saleh, was appointed to Syria’s new cabinet as minister of emergencies and disaster management when the new government came to power. Today, he is bringing his decade-plus experience and community networks to the entire country.

In the northern Idlib province, previously ruled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the Islamist militant group that ultimately broke with Assad’s rule—various civil society organizations such as Kesh Malek, the Mazaya Women’s Organization, and the Violet Organization for Relief and Development provided educational and literacy support, women’s empowerment initiatives, teacher trainings, vocational training, and civic-leadership programs designed to prepare the next generation of Syrians to rebuild their country.

In Duma, a suburb of Damascus that endured years of siege (including the deadly April 2018 chemical attacks claimed to be executed by the Assad regime), people such as Ameen Badran, an activist and local community council member, started arranging garbage pickups and today continue to engage in reconstruction efforts even after al-Sharaa’s government appointed a mayor.

Similarly, in Zabaadni, after the fall of Assad, English teacher Alaa Zain Al Den told one of the authors that “the trauma on us was so much that we don’t even know what to do with this newly found freedom and joy.”

“However,” he added, “what we do know is that we want to rebuild, we want to start our work—the work that was taken from us.”

Today, Syria’s education system lies in ruins, with over half of the five million school-age children currently out of school and around seven to eight thousand schools damaged or destroyed across the country. This educational breakdown underlines why rebuilding must rely on local knowledge and community-rooted institutions that only Syrians, with firsthand awareness of what their neighborhoods truly need, can design. This is one sector that incoming investments should focus on as it helps to develop a new generation of Syrians for a revived economy.

Alaa and many hundreds of educators alike remained in Syria through the war. Expelled from his government teaching post in 2017 after refusing conscription into Assad’s army, Alaa spent years in limbo, unable to find stable work as the economy collapsed. The cost of that decision was immense. For years, he lived in hiding, while his brother was arrested during the war. Alaa’s family found out recently that his brother was killed in prison. Despite the scars, he and other teachers now hope for a chance to return to their classrooms and rebuild a broken educational system.

“Reconstruction in Syria will be meaningless if it is not built on the lived experience of Syrians themselves. Our communities know exactly what was destroyed—and what it takes to rebuild in a way that lasts,” said Anas, another educator who works in the same school as Alaa in Zabadani.

Private sector-led workforce development

These are just a few examples of some of the individuals, grassroots organizations, and local initiatives that have the experience, local knowledge, and networks to work with the private sector—both Syrian and international—to effectively contribute to this essential rebuilding process.

Where there is a skills gap, especially in technology-heavy sectors, companies investing in Syria must commit to training and up-skilling Syrians, not just as future employees, but as future managers, executives, and leaders. This requires a workforce-development formula that moves beyond traditional international-aid models and instead places private enterprises at the center of project design, implementation, and assessment, allowing their sector-specific needs to shape training pipelines and employment pathways.

A successful example of this approach is Jordan’s Luminus Technical University College (LTUC)—a private-sector–funded institution that reimagined vocational and technical education by linking all its programs directly to labor-market demand and employer input. Today, LTUC offers fifty accredited programs across twelve specializations, including information technology, engineering, creative media, construction, and health and safety—all fields that mirror the urgent reconstruction needs identified for Syria in assessments by the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme that emphasize shortages in skilled engineers, technicians, digital-economy workers, and construction professionals.

Local ownership of reconstruction initiatives brings with it core elements that may sound frivolous for international heavy hitters but are proven to be key ingredients of long-lasting success. Chief among these foundational pillars are local integrity and purpose, in addition to deep knowledge of a complex and multidimensional sociocultural context.

Hisham Tinawi—a once successful shopkeeper in Zabadani whose home was destroyed under heavy artillery and airstrikes—explains how “local communities possess the precise knowledge of the destruction and how to build viable solutions.”

He added that “those who remained inside the country possess accumulated field experience that no external party can replace; excluding them from the reconstruction process means excluding the truth from the picture.” Syrians see themselves not as bystanders to a new future that they paid for with their blood and tears, but as core partners in rebuilding.

“Effective reconstruction cannot be conceived without linking it to the voice of Syrians on the ground; we are not just beneficiaries but key partners with a clear vision of the future we want,” Tinawi told the author.

Today, investors—regional and global—must heed Tinawi’s advice and invest in education and workforce development training, as a start. Syria’s civil society remains its biggest asset and has proven ready and effective at rebuilding a Syria they so deeply deserve.

Tara Kangarlou is an award-winning global affairs journalist, author, and humanitarian who has worked with news outlets such as NBC, CNN, CNN International, and Al Jazeera America. She is also the author of the bestselling book The Heartbeat of Iran, the founder of nonprofit Art of Hope, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, teaching on humanized storytelling and journalism.

Merissa Khurma is the founder and chief executive officer of AMENA Strategies, an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute, and a nonresident fellow at the Baker Institute. She formerly headed the Middle East program at the Wilson Center. 

The post Syria’s civil society must take center stage in reconstruction appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Public Event Thu, December 4, 2025 • 9:00 am ET

Beyond the game: The new frontiers of sports diplomacy

Ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw, the Africa Center and the Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative host a series of conversations on what major sporting events mean for development, diplomacy, and national security and resilience.

Africa Economy & Business Politics & Diplomacy Resilience & Society

The 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will play out across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, will be “an overload, a true plethora of opportunities,” said the White House’s Andrew Giuliani on Thursday, “not just for American citizens that are traveling within the country, but also international visitors that are coming in to enjoy the World Cup.” 

Giuliani, the executive director of the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026, spoke at an Atlantic Council event on the importance of sports diplomacy on the eve of Friday’s World Cup draw. 

“If we are able to nail this one,” Giuliani said, “I think this is going to be one of these recurring things where it’s not just going to be a decade of major sports, but a century of major sports moving forward here in the United States.” 

Giuliani estimated the economic output of the upcoming tournament at thirty billion dollars. US Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) also pointed to the windfall the World Cup will bring, as well as the broader impact of the United States as a World Cup host.  

“When we talk about sports diplomacy,” Kamlager-Dove explained, “we’re really talking about a way to open the door to new opportunities,” particularly economic opportunities around tourism, job growth, and infrastructure.  

“Sport is a great equalizer in an incredibly unequal world,” she added. “And so we have got to engage with as many folks as possible and lean into the power of sports diplomacy.” 

Below are more highlights from the event, during which foreign diplomats, US officials, and figures from the world of soccer gathered at our studios to talk about the power of sports diplomacy and the opportunities sporting events bring to local communities. 

How the White House plans to “nail” the tournament

• Giuliani explained that his task force’s discussions focus closely on “safety” and “security,” from protecting people in stadiums to ensuring air travelers arrive safely. He said to expect an announcement in the coming weeks on the administration’s security approach. 
• He also talked about the United States’ new FIFA Priority Appointment Scheduling System, which expedites visa applications for ticket holders. “I think this is a perfect example of balancing the safety and security that we want,” he argued, “not just for these games, but also for the country and for international tourists and visitors coming in, while also making sure that we are welcoming and opening a front door.” 
• That welcome, he argued, is important. “This is a great opportunity,” he said, “to show off to the world American exceptionalism, our first 250 years, the true greatness of the United States of America, and the hope and promise of the next 250 years.” 
• Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber added that, with the World Cup, “the entire world is going to see that the world’s game actually lives here in our country,” as demonstrated by the growth of women’s soccer and the high interest among the country’s youth.

The world’s equalizer

• Kamlager-Dove, who introduced the bipartisan American Decades of Sports Act to create a US sports diplomacy strategy, explained that sports offer a doorway for connection with other people. On the other side, “we can then engage on other important issues like clean water, like solid infrastructure, like feeding starving children,” she said. 
• FIFA’s Victor Montagliani—who leads the Confederation of North, Central America and the Caribbean Association Football—added that “football is one of the most reliable, neutral spaces,” so “nations that may disagree politically still meet on the pitch. Cultures that may clash still follow the same rules.” 
• “Football is not just entertainment, it’s not just business, and it’s not just competition,” Montagliani said. “It really is . . . the most diplomatic platform that this globe has.” 
• Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, agreed, adding that soccer is “about human engagement.”  
• “There are wars all around the world, but this is the pitch where people can come and forget all of that and say, ‘I’m your equal,’” she explained.

A global unifier

• Giuliani noted of the 2026 World Cup participants: “You have three countries that might have different politics, different beliefs, different ideas, but they all banded together.” Montagliani similarly argued that “through a football-first philosophy,” the type of collaboration that seemed “laughable” became “entirely achievable.” 
• “The beauty about North America,” Montagliani argued, is that attendees from around the world have “a piece” in the region: “They may have a relative, they may have a friend, somebody that’s come here and immigrated here,” he explained. “Football is a sport of immigrants, no different than the countries that were built by immigrants.” 
• Moroccan Ambassador to the United States Youssef Amrani highlighted how the 2030 World Cup will see, for the first time, two countries on different continents (Morocco and Spain) co-hosting. “It is a strong message,” he said, adding that the cooperation “is important for as far as security, migration issues, [and] economic development.” 
• But soccer also “unites the people inside the same country,” Amrani argued. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas echoed that message, explaining how his city snagged a spot as a World Cup host thanks to collaboration between “political figures from across the political aisle”—and Lucas said such collaboration is continuing to prepare the city for the global sporting event.  
• With the World Cup preparations, “we have seen commonalities and relationships that don’t exist regularly in American politics,” Lucas said, “and I think foundationally it shows the power of the World Cup, and it shows the power of sports.”

A propeller for economies

• The legacy of this World Cup, Garber argued, “will be all the great things that’ll happen in the community,” including the expansion of job opportunities. 
• Al-Saud explained how the opportunity to host the World Cup in 2034 has required her country to invest more in Saudi soccer teams, programs, and infrastructure—and, ultimately, in young people. “This industry is an industry that uplifts people everywhere it goes,” she argued. 
• Amrani agreed, saying that the soccer industry in Morocco has unleashed “opportunity for jobs, for investment, for infrastructure,” such as more modern trains and solar panels. He also highlighted the sport’s role in fostering “social inclusion.” 
• Montagliani pointed out that women’s soccer is growing “at a record pace,” which has created additional pathways for sports diplomacy.  
• Al-Saud noted that regulatory shifts and investments have played a role in accelerating women’s soccer in Saudi Arabia, but she argued that the most powerful force has been an “understanding as a nation that a young woman’s right to compete is equal to a young man’s right to compete.” 
• She appealed to the private sector for more investments in women’s soccer: “Help us catch up,” she said. “The young ladies deserve it. They have the skill, they have the talent, they are just seeking the opportunity.”

Katherine Golden is an associate director of editorial at the Atlantic Council.

Watch the event

The post How the United States can harness its sports diplomacy moment, as the FIFA World Cup nears appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Not everyone follows this routine. Some people, tired of the nightly bombardments, choose to sleep through air raid alarms, even if that means risking potential death. Many others, including the elderly and those with physical impediments, are unable to make their way downstairs every time the sirens sound. Each new Russian attack is a reminder of how precarious life has become in wartime Ukraine. 

While civilians struggle to maintain a sense of normality, the reality on the front lines could hardly be more dramatic. Ukrainian troops are overstretched and desperately short of reinforcements, ammunition, and equipment. Inch by inch, the Russian army continues to grind forward, testing each vulnerability and exploiting every weakness.

Despite these incredible challenges, the Ukrainian military continues to adapt and innovate as it seeks to hold the line with new tools and evolving strategies. The will to resist remains unbroken, but the toll this struggle exacts on soldiers, their families, and the entire Ukrainian nation often feels unbearable. 

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.

As Ukrainians fight for national survival on the battlefield, another struggle is also playing out against domestic corruption. Ukraine’s efforts to move toward a more accountable and democratic system of government are a key cause of Moscow’s escalating aggression, with Putin viewing Ukrainian democracy as an existential threat to Russian authoritarianism. Ukrainians understand that battling corruption is just as vital in this war as resisting Russia on the battlefield.

Ukrainian society has been attempting to combat corruption for decades. Exactly twenty-five years ago, the Kuchmagate scandal rocked Ukraine. This implicated then-president Leonid Kuchma in the murder of my husband Georgiy Gongadze, a prominent investigative journalist and the founder of the Ukrainska Pravda news site. On that occasion, the pathway to the truth began with a lone whistleblower from the presidential security team, who took huge risks to expose what he saw as grave misconduct.  

A quarter of a century later, there are strong indications that Ukraine is making progress in the fight against corruption. In late November, one of Ukraine’s most powerful men, presidential administration head Andriy Yermak, resigned following a search of his home by the country’s anti-corruption authorities amid a rapidly unfolding scandal involving figures close to the very highest levels of power.

Once again, Ukrainska Pravda journalists were instrumental in breaking the story, but the differences between then and now are also striking. Back when my husband was murdered, there were no institutional checks in place and no raids on the homes of senior officials. Today, Ukraine has built institutions capable of pushing back and producing results.

Clearly, the ghosts of corruption still haunt Ukraine’s corridors of power, but impunity is giving way to accountability. This is exactly the transformation that many Ukrainians are fighting for, and one of the main reasons why Ukraine scares Putin so much. 

Eurasia Center events

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How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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After nearly four years of full-scale war, most Ukrainians want peace, but they also realize that peace will only be possible if accompanied by justice and security. For a generation, Ukrainians have fought for these goals. They know that simply stopping the shooting will not bring real peace, and are committed to ending the war in a way that will last.  

From Kyiv to Lviv, I hear the same message from people who desperately want the war to be over but understand that a rushed peace could have disastrous consequences. “We have sheltered too long in the dark to accept a peace that isn’t just,” one woman commented. “Our sons and daughters are not only fighting to defend our land, but for the justice that must come after,” a taxi driver told me.

The world needs to understand that Russia’s invasion is already reshaping global security. Putin is not just seizing Ukrainian territory; he is trying to erase Ukraine as a nation and erode the entire international order. If the world lets this happen, a much larger war will no longer be a distant risk. It will become inevitable. 

There is now a clear danger that Western leaders will support a hurried and unfair peace deal. This would send a dangerous message that aggression pays. Autocrats around the world would draw the obvious conclusion that they can change borders by force. This would undermine the foundational principles of international relations established in the post-World War II era. Europe cannot afford to set such a precedent.

With the Russian invasion entering a critical phase and Moscow’s hybrid war spreading across Europe, the time to act is now. Ukraine’s defense is Europe’s defense. The West must increase support and stop Putin before he goes even further. It is delusional to think that sacrificing Ukraine will satisfy Russia. Instead, a bad peace will only lead to a bigger war. The price of hesitation will be far higher than the cost of action.

Myroslava Gongadze is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a senior fellow at Friends of Europe.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 3, 2025

Returning Ukraine’s abducted children should be central to any peace plan

By Kristina Hook

The United States should lead efforts to secure the release and return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. This could help build confidence in the peace process and boost efforts to end the war, writes Kristina Hook.

Conflict European Union

UkraineAlert Nov 27, 2025

While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree this week calling for an escalation in efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Human Rights

UkraineAlert Dec 2, 2025

Ukraine peace plan must not include amnesty for Russian war crimes

By Ivan Horodyskyy

US President Donald Trump’s 28-point peace plan for Ukraine includes an amnesty for war crimes that critics say will only strengthen Putin’s sense of impunity and set the stage for more Russian aggression, writes Ivan Horodyskyy.

Conflict European Union

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.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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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The post Ukraine’s warning to the West: A bad peace will lead to a bigger war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This is the first chapter in the Freedom and Prosperity Center’s 2026 Atlas, which analyzes the state of freedom and prosperity in ten countries. Drawing on our thirty-year dataset covering political, economic, and legal developments, this year’s Atlas is the evidence-based guide to better policy in 2026.

Evolution of freedom

Ghana’s signature achievement since the mid-1990s is the consolidation of civic and political freedoms and a competitive political order in which citizens, journalists, and civic organizations routinely hold leaders to account. The durability of this achievement is not a result of elite benevolence or political will but the product of a dense, independent civil society and a remarkably resilient independent media ecosystem. When governments test the boundaries of civic space, the response is often swift and organized; this social infrastructure is the primary reason Ghana’s civic and political freedoms have remained consistently strong for more than two decades. This context is reflected in the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Indexes’ political subindex for Ghana, which sits well above the economic and legal subindices. In recent years, it sits in the low-to-mid 70s out of a maximum score of 100, a pattern that aligns with lived realities. In the most recent Afrobarometer survey, conducted in 2024, an overwhelming majority of Ghanaians (85 percent) reported that they did not fear political violence or intimidation during the last national elections, a strong testament to the electoral freedoms that Ghanaians enjoy. Moreover, a majority (52 percent) expressed trust in civil society organizations, ahead of religious leaders (who are trusted by 49 percent). Only the military (trusted by 65 percent) ranks ahead of civil society organizations in Ghana.¹

The historical roots of this civic vigilance matter. From the anti-colonial mobilization led by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first post-independence president, and mass professional and student associations to later generations of advocacy groups and think tanks, Ghanaians have long treated resistance to state overreach as a civic obligation.

As formal unions of lawyers, teachers, students, and medical professionals gave way to contemporary civil society and independent media organizations and research networks—among them, the Media Foundation for West Africa, the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, the Ghana Integrity Initiative, the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, and many others, including subnational advocacy groups—the core impulse has remained the same: to protect and defend civic space, demand procedural fairness, and insist that those in power remain answerable to the public. This explains why the social reaction to efforts to undermine political freedoms is often met with resistance and why Ghana’s political openings have not been easily reversed.

Electoral integrity is a useful illustration of how these social checks operate. While the courts can usually be swayed by partisan crosscurrents when individual political actors are charged with corruption or other acts of impropriety, the dynamic is often different with election disputes. The vigilance of civil society and independent media organizations in monitoring and independently collating election results at the polling-station level often helps to provide credible evidence when electoral disputes arise. The volume and quality of that evidence strengthen adjudication, making it harder for judicial bias to gain traction and increasing the credibility of outcomes, even in contentious contests.² This distinction is important: While the administration of justice in ordinary (nonpolitical) cases is broadly reliable, the politicization of corruption cases can distort judicial behavior; election cases, by contrast, have benefitted from robust, external scrutiny that fortifies the work of the courts.

This juxtaposition points to the core challenge in Ghana’s performance on legal freedom: The judiciary’s structural vulnerability to executive influence, particularly through appointments to the High Court and Supreme Court. Observers can—and do—sort judges into partisan “buckets,” a perception that inevitably erodes confidence in the system’s neutrality. Survey data clearly show a deterioration of citizens’ trust in the judicial system in the last fifteen years, falling by 20 percentage points since 2011.³ Yet outside of high-stakes political cases, the courts tend to function competently and deliver justice with regularity.

Recent movement in the legal subindex has been mildly positive, driven in part by improvements in informality and, to a lesser degree, by steadier security conditions after the turbulence of the early 2000s. On informality, the government’s digitalization initiatives, including the introduction of national (and tax) identification (the Ghana Card) and a digital address system, have helped to identify and increasingly formalize informal businesses. Other initiatives, such as the institution of fee-free secondary education, opened opportunities for young Ghanaians to further their education instead of entering the informal economy. The National Youth Employment Program, although relatively less successful, helped to draw young entrepreneurs into more formalized activities. Finally, a surge of capital investments into construction, alongside an expansion in mining activities, has created demand for artisans, contractors, and allied tradespeople who transact in more formal ways than the street-level microenterprise typical in developing economies. The result is a measurable reduction in the prevalence of informality, a trend visible within the relevant component of the legal subindex.

The gradual strengthening of security owes more to internal stability than to a benign regional environment. Ghana’s northern border with Burkina Faso and proximity to Nigeria’s insurgency-affected areas create constant risks, and yet Ghana has avoided the cascade of instability that has afflicted parts of the Sahel. That relative steadiness, together with the normal functioning of everyday justice for nonpolitical cases, helps explain why legal freedom is trending slightly upward despite persistent concerns about executive sway over judicial appointments and decisions.

Corruption control within the justice sector is another area to watch. Across administrations, chief justices have consistently placed anti-corruption at the center of their institutional reform agendas, and recent executive appeals to rebuild public trust in the courts suggest continued political salience. However, these public commitments have not always translated into tangible reforms or outcomes. Public perception of judicial corruption remains high: According to the 2024 Afrobarometer survey, more than 40 percent of Ghanaians believe that “most or all judges and magistrates” are corrupt.⁴ The growing trend of presidents appointing loyalists to the Supreme Court has only reinforced these perceptions, contributing to Ghana’s relatively weak performance on the legal subindex. The ongoing constitutional review presents an opportunity to reform judicial appointments and promotions, tighten avenues for corruption, and strengthen judicial independence.

Ghana’s strong performance on elections, civil liberties, and political rights within the political subindex is tempered by weaker scores on legislative constraints on the executive, highlighting concerns about the effectiveness of institutional checks in practice. However, civil society remains uncompromising in defending democratic norms, including contesting attempts to erode these checks. The resulting equilibrium is not perfect—nor is it immutable—but it has proven remarkably resilient over the past generation.

Economic freedoms have followed their own trajectory, with a notable increase from the mid-2000s into the first half of the 2010s, a period that coincided with the broader “Africa Rising” narrative. This period was characterized by strong improvements in governance and economic growth, rising incomes, and a growing middle class. Consolidation of Ghana’s return to constitutional democracy commenced in the year 2000 with the transfer of power from the ruling party to an opposition party, which further boosted optimism in the country’s political and economic outlook. The new political leadership signaled a clear focus on improving the economy, and market openness and property-rights enforcement seemed to find firmer footing. Former President John Kufuor is remembered in this context for emphasizing macroeconomic health and business-climate improvements that many citizens experienced in their daily lives. The results of committed political leadership and effective economic management are reflected in the economic subindex and the other components such as investment freedom and property rights, starting in the mid-2000s.

The subsequent downturn around 2015 is worth noting. Rising debt-service pressures, coupled with a large budget deficit and high inflation culminated in Ghana going in for an IMF program; a similar pattern occurred around 2023-24 as reflected in the downward trend of the economic subindex. These patterns signal the fragility of gains when fiscal anchors are not backed by disciplined fiscal decisions—such as politically motivated increases in public spending during election years and subsidies on utilities and petroleum products, among others—and when investment freedom and property-rights expectations face credibility questions. These observations underscore that Ghana’s enviable political freedoms do not automatically translate into disciplined fiscal management or sustained economic openness. The freedom metrics capture this: The political subindex remains high, while the economic and legal dimensions fluctuate with policy choices that either reinforce or erode market institutions and democratic norms.

Trade freedom tells a more erratic story. Ghana’s trade policy framework has generally been open by regional standards, but the component’s volatility reflects the broader health of the economy and investors’ read on the policy environment. In periods of economic stress, policy consistency suffers, and openness on paper does not translate into confidence in practice. The trends in the data thus track not only tariff schedules and non-tariff measures but also the credibility of macroeconomic management, which is often punctuated in election years.

The trajectory of women’s economic freedom stands out as a major structural improvement. Around 2004, there was a steep rise in the economic subindex driven in part by a cluster of women’s empowerment policies of the Kufuor administration: free maternal health services, including postnatal care services that reduced a key barrier to women’s labor-market participation, and explicit efforts to expand women’s access to finance and enterprise support. Those initiatives may have helped to boost women’s economic autonomy and anchor a higher plateau that persisted in the years that followed. The component’s level has stagnated since about 2008 and hence leaves some room for improvement—but the rapid change around 2004 is unmistakable. Recent Afrobarometer survey data for Ghana show strong popular support for women to have equal rights to work as men. However, more than a quarter of Ghanaians (26 percent) identify employers’ preference for hiring men as the top barrier to women’s advancement, ahead of childcare (17 percent) and skills gaps (16 percent).⁵

Where do remaining constraints lie? First, land ownership: In Ghana,  community and family lands are predominantly controlled by male heads; women’s ownership and collateralization of land remain very limited. Given the economic value of land, women remain at a significant disadvantage that dampens entrepreneurship, constrains access to credit, and restricts intergenerational wealth transfer for women. Second, intrahousehold decision-making: In many households, women’s ability to take paid work outside the home remains mediated by male authority. These social and legal frictions are the kinds of de facto constraints that keep the Women’s Economic Freedom component below its potential despite the formal policy gains that started in the mid-2000s.

Evolution of prosperity

Ghana’s prosperity trajectory since the mid-2000s mirrors, in broad outline, the “Africa Rising” era: a period of macroeconomic optimism, improved governance, favorable terms of trade, and political stability across much of the continent. Between 2005 and the mid-2010s, the Prosperity Index registered a strong and upward trend, reflecting the robust growth in incomes and steady improvements in social indicators, even as inequality widened in the classic early-development pattern. Ghana rode this wave and, for several years, significantly outpaced the sub-Saharan Africa average.

The story of the income component is familiar but still striking in its local particulars. A large discovery of offshore oil in the late 2000s added a new driver to a commodity basket already weighted toward gold and cocoa. In the mid-2000s, when global commodity prices were favorable, Ghana’s growth accelerated sharply; in 2011, Ghana recorded a double-digit real GDP growth rate (about 11 percent), up from about 8 percent the year prior. Oil windfalls amplified these gains, though they also heightened exposure to volatility and raised questions about how resource-linked revenues were managed.⁶ The income component of the Prosperity Index captures this rise and the subsequent plateau, which has persisted over the last decade. Reversals are visible too, mainly coinciding with the two IMF interventions mentioned earlier, driven in large part by fiscal indiscipline during election years.

The inequality component of the Prosperity Index shows a rapid deterioration, especially from the year 2000. But the composition of Ghana’s inequality is complex. It is not simply a rural-urban story; it is also generational. Large cohorts of better-educated youth, especially those under thirty-five, struggle to find formal employment at scale, while older cohorts, who are relatively less educated, hold on to existing jobs.⁷ The consequence is an age-skewed labor market that expands inequality even as education levels rise. On the rural side, extensive reliance on small-holder agriculture—more than 40 percent of the population is engaged in subsistence farming—keeps cash incomes low. Climate variability has compounded these pressures, with shifts in rainfall and temperature patterns outpacing the seed and crop research needed to adapt. The Index’s inequality line captures the macro pattern, and the underlying micro-mechanisms are the youth (un)employment crunch and the persistent productivity trap of smallholder agriculture.

Environment and health are relative bright spots. The national push to switch households from charcoal and wood to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking—especially the 2013 rural LGP promotion program—may have helped to reduce indoor air pollution and, with it, the number of respiratory and related illnesses. Additionally, the government’s 2021 Green Ghana initiative to plant five million trees nationwide to combat desertification signaled a strong commitment to environmental issues in the country.⁸ The behavioral transition and practical action on desertification probably account for the Prosperity Index’s environment component alongside CO₂ and other measures. On the health side, Ghana’s COVID-19 response benefitted from institutional memory and capacity developed during earlier West African epidemics. Ebola never crossed into Ghana, thanks in part to the region’s experience dealing with health epidemics. When COVID-19 broke out, pandemic protocols were quickly activated and enforced, which resulted in comparatively low infection rates and deaths and a health system that proved more resilient than many expected.

Education presents a more mixed picture. Policy volatility in the secondary cycle—oscillating between three- and four-year models—created confusion and capacity mismatches just as youth cohorts ballooned. Free, compulsory basic education expanded access, but in many districts infrastructure and staffing could not keep pace, producing “shift systems” and, in some cases, causing students to drop out before completing upper-secondary education. Because the Prosperity Index’s education component bundles mean years of schooling with expected attainment, the friction from policy oscillation and demographic pressure is visible at a level that remains middling despite long-run improvements.

Finally, informality also intersects with prosperity through the labor market. The government’s digitalization programs—the introduction of the Ghana Card, which links to individual tax identification numbers, as well as the digital address system—have expanded formalization of the national economy. Moreover, governments’ special initiatives to increase youth employment and a boon in the construction and mining sectors have pulled workers into the formal sector. These interventions should, in principle, raise tax revenues and improve public service availability and access over time. The hard question is durability: Formalization built on cyclical or enclave sectors may not last if investment slows or governance costs mount. The Prosperity Index cannot answer that question by itself, but its pattern—modest gains in prosperity with uneven distributional effects and vulnerability to macro slippage—point to areas where reforms might matter most.

The path forward

The economic, social, and political outlook of Ghana’s next decade will depend largely on the steadiness with which it improves core institutions and transforms its civic strength into predictable, broad-based gains. Moreover, aligning reforms to citizens’ stated priorities—jobs, public services, and integrity—can increase traction.⁹ The political foundations are relatively strong; the next important step is ensuring that the transparency and accountability mechanisms that guard the conduct of elections also insulate the justice system from partisan distortion in high-stakes cases. Judicial appointments will remain politically salient, but the deeper imperative is to tighten the system’s incentives so that corruption cases are decided on evidence rather than allegiance. Civil society and media can help—by maintaining the evidentiary standard that has worked in election disputes—but ultimately the judiciary must build a reputation for political impartiality that is strong enough to withstand executive pressure. The ongoing constitutional review offers a chance to implement a judicial reform agenda that delivers on this objective.

Economic management is the second pillar. The political business cycles are familiar by now: A new government comes to power and starts out with prudent fiscal management that boosts confidence and attracts investment, often resulting in an increase in the economic subindex. Then comes election time and fiscal indiscipline—such as excessive borrowing and indiscriminate public spending with weak fiscal oversight—erode confidence and investment freedom, triggering adjustment and decline. Breaking this cycle requires more than fiscal rules on paper; it requires political commitment to enforce them consistently and minimize politically motivated borrowing and spending. The 2015 and 2024 IMF programs are markers of what happens when that discipline falters. In the coming years, the goal should be to make investment freedom boring—i.e., stable, predictable, and insulated from the electoral business cycle.

On economic freedom, two structural agendas stand out. The first is women’s economic freedom. The 2004 leap tied to women-centered policies shows how targeted policy can permanently raise the ceiling of economic progress. The unfinished business is in property rights, especially land ownership. In areas where family land remains the norm and titles are controlled by male heads, women’s ability to own, mortgage, and leverage land is curtailed. Reform here is politically delicate, embedded in social norms and local authority structures, but the economic payoff could be enormous: more women-owned firms, better access to credit, and fairer intergenerational asset accumulation. The women’s freedom component of the Index offers a clear benchmark; moving from the mid-seventies to the high eighties would require not just programs but enforceable property rights.

The second is youth (un)employment. Inequality in Ghana increasingly wears a generational face;a cohort of better-educated young people cannot find formal, stable jobs in sufficient numbers. Policy tools here must focus on easing business entry, expansion in labor-absorbing sectors, and modernizing agricultural value chains so that rural youth are not confined to subsistence farming. Climate-smart research and extension services, reliable input markets, and storage and transport infrastructure can help farmers move up the value ladder—and should be paired with vocational pathways aligned to construction, light manufacturing, and services. Such an agenda could help to address the twin problems of rural low productivity and urban underemployment.

Strengthened legal freedom and rule of law can support both agendas if reforms focus on clarity of the law and the quality of bureaucracy. Where statutes are clear, predictable, and enforced uniformly, the transaction costs that push firms into informality will fall; where frontline administration is competent and corruption risks are contained, formalization becomes a benefit rather than a burden. Ghana’s recent sector-led formalization has demonstrated that workers and firms will choose formal channels when the opportunity set changes. The task now is to make those choices systemic: digital one-stop services for business registration and tax collection; credible and quick adjudication for commercial disputes; and incentives for small firms to formalize without fear of retroactive penalties.

Regional (in)security will remain a concerning external variable. Instability in parts of the Sahel and the enduring threat of violent extremism in neighboring regions create risks that Ghana has to grapple with. The country’s success to date reflects internal discipline and professional security services, but the calculus can change quickly as alliances and external funding priorities shift. Ghana’s democratic resilience—anchored in a vigilant civil society and robust private media—makes it better placed than many to navigate these shocks without sacrificing core freedoms. The imperative is to ensure that security responses remain proportionate and bounded by law, so that security gains are not purchased at the cost of civil and political liberties that have been the bedrock of Ghana’s democratic success story.

Geoeconomic partnerships will also shape the opportunity set for Ghana. Specifically, infrastructure that lowers freight costs—an inland port located up north with rail connectivity, for instance—has immediate appeal, and Ghana would do well by investing in this area. Engagements with Chinese state and private investors are often judged domestically on whether they deliver such tangible benefits; they are not, by themselves, read as threats to democratic credentials. The test for the next decade is to structure these partnerships transparently, align them with national priorities, and avoid governance concessions that have complicated infrastructure deals elsewhere. If done well, they can help stabilize economic policy by supporting trade freedom in practice, not just on paper, and by attracting private investment that widens formal employment.

The prosperity side of the ledger will hinge on two slow-moving but decisive social investments. The first is education system reliability. When secondary school terms oscillate, cohort planning collapses; when seating capacity lags enrollment, “shift systems” lead to lost learning and early exits. The policy objective must prioritize stability: a curriculum and cycle length that survives political alternation, infrastructure that grows with cohorts, and targeted support to keep marginal students—especially rural girls—through upper secondary. If achieved, educational attainment will move steadily upward, with compounding effects on income and inequality.

The second is health and environment. Ghana’s clean cooking fuel and afforestation initiatives demonstrate how coordinated public messaging and practical access can drive large-scale shifts in household behavior—which often yield immediate and tangible benefits. Extending this logic—through cleaner fuels, safer urban air, adaptive health systems, and expanded green coverage—can enhance environmental quality, improve health outcomes, and free up resources otherwise consumed by preventable disease burdens.

Finally, the country’s political economy will continue to be shaped by how it manages its natural resource wealth. When mineral and oil revenues supplant tax collection, citizens have fewer reasons to monitor spending, governments face fewer incentives to be transparent, public resource leakages rise, and the discipline that keeps debt manageable erodes. A forward-looking reform would therefore tackle the credible fiscal rules that bind during booms, transparent revenue management that makes it costly to divert funds, and a tax system that is simple enough to comply with and fair enough to legitimize. The expanded government digitalization programs offer sound foundations to make this possible. If Ghana can lock in these basics while preserving the civic and media freedoms that have distinguished it for three decades, legal and economic institutions will catch up and converge with political freedom, and prosperity gains will follow.

Ghana’s comparative advantage is … the lived practice of accountability that precedes and outlasts any single administration.

Civil society and media have proven that they can guard the franchise; the task before us is to extend that guardianship to the legal system’s most politically sensitive corners and to the fiscal choices that unlock prosperity and avoid the familiar cycle of fiscal indiscipline, crisis, and repair. If managed well, the evidence should be visible where it matters most: a steadier investment freedom line, a women’s economic freedom score that rises again rather than plateaus, an inequality curve that bends as youth employment expands, and a legal freedom profile that reflects not just order in the streets but fairness in the courtroom. That is the trajectory Ghana can reasonably aim for in the decade ahead, and it is within reach.

about the author

Joseph Asunka is the CEO of Afrobarometer, a pan-African survey research organization that conducts public attitude surveys on governance and social issues across the continent. His research interests are in governance, democracy, and political economy of development. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles.

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1    Center for Democratic Development, Afrobarometer Round 10 Survey in Ghana, 2024, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Ghana-summary-of-results-Afrobarometer-R10-22april25.pdf (see pages 30, 32, and 33 of the summary of results tables).

2    For causal evidence that domestic observers in Ghana’s 2012 elections reduced fraud and violence at monitored stations and altered parties’ manipulation strategies, see Joseph Asunka et al.,  “Electoral Fraud or Violence: The Effect of Observers on Party Manipulation Strategies,” British Journal of Political Science 49, no. 1 (2019): 129–51.

3    See the Afrobarometer report on public trust in institutions here: https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/AD891-PAP20-Africans-trust-in-key-institutions-and-leaders-is-weakening-Afrobarometer-31oct24.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

4    Center for Democratic Development, “Ghanaians Decry Widespread Corruption, Afrobarometer Survey Shows,” news release, February 14, 2025, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/R10-News-release-Ghanaians-decry-widespread-corruption-Afrobarometer-14feb25.pdf.

5    Ghana Round 10 Summary of Results, April 22, 2025, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Ghana-summary-of-results-Afrobarometer-R10-22april25.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

6    According to an Afrobarometer survey in 2022, 85 percent of Ghanaians support tighter regulations of natural resource extraction. See Center for Democratic Development, “Ghanaians Call for Tighter Regulation of Natural Resource Extraction,” news release, November 8, 2022, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/R9-News-release-Ghanaians-call-for-tighter-regulation-of-natural-resource-extraction-Afrobarometer-bh-7november22.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

7    Josephine Appiah-Nyamekye Sanny, Shannon van Wyk-Khosa, and Joseph Asunka, “Africa’s Youth: More Educated, Less Employed, Still Unheard in Policy and Development,” Afrobarometer, November 15, 2023, https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/AD734-PAP3-Africas-youth-More-educated-less-employed-still-unheard-Afrobarometer-13nov23.pdf.

8    Elorm Ntumy, “Green Ghana Day: A Chance to Turn the Tide on Deforestation,” UN Capital Development Fund, 2021, https://www.uncdf.org/article/6857/green-ghana-day.

9    See Joseph Asunka and E. Gyimah-Boadi, “People-Centered Development: Why the Policy Priorities and Lived Experiences of African Citizens Should Matter for National Development Policy,” Foresight Africa 2025–2030, May 13, 2025, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/people-centered-development-why-the-policy-priorities-and-lived-experiences-of-african-citizens-should-matter-for-national-development-policy/.

The post Delivering justice and jobs is the real test of Ghana’s storied democracy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

]]> https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/a-stronger-safer-and-more-prosperous-hemisphere-the-case-for-investing-in-democracy-in-the-americas/ Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/?p=891352 This issue brief is the fourth in the Freedom and Prosperity Center's "Future of democracy assistance" series, which analyzes the many complex challenges to democracy around the world—and highlights actionable policies that promote democratic governance.

The post A stronger, safer, and more prosperous hemisphere: The case for investing in democracy in the Americas appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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Bottom lines up front

• Democratic backsliding, transnational organized crime, and authoritarian influence are driving insecurity and migration across Latin America and the Caribbean.
• At the same time, weak rule of law and entrenched kleptocratic networks are stifling economic growth and enabling criminal organizations.
• To push back, the US must shift to a broader investment-driven foreign policy that mobilizes public-private partnerships and supports democratic actors.

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This issue brief is part of the Freedom and Prosperity Center’s “The future of democracy assistance” series, which analyzes the many complex challenges to democracy around the world and highlights actionable policies that promote democratic governance.

Introduction

After decades of democratic and economic progress, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is now losing ground. Between 1995 and 2016, the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Indexes recorded steady gains—a more than eight-point rise in prosperity and a more than three-point rise in freedom—that lifted millions out of poverty, deepened the region’s integration into the global economy, and strengthened democratic institutions. Over the past decade, however, this momentum has stalled, and in many countries reversed. Across the region, insecurity has surged, authoritarianism has deepened, and corruption has stifled development, with consequences that reach far beyond its borders.

This reversal is fueling two interconnected crises reshaping the Western Hemisphere: migration and insecurity. Over the past decade, migration—both within the region and toward the United States—has surged. Authoritarian rule in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, along with the collapse of Haiti, has driven mass exoduses, while gang violence spurs migration from Central America and hundreds of thousands more have left other countries in search of safety and economic opportunity. Transit states such as Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Panama face mounting strain on public services, while the United States confronts unprecedented pressure at its southern border.

Regional security is also deteriorating as gangs and transnational criminal networks expand their operations. Mexican cartels dominate the production and trafficking of fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and other illicit drugs across Latin America and into the United States. The effects of their trade have been devastating, with tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually, particularly in the United States and Canada. Other groups, such as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, extend beyond narcotics, driving homicides, corruption, and violent competition over trafficking routes across the region.

Beneath these crises lies a deeper erosion of governance and democracy—one that the United States should support its allies in confronting. Weak rule of law and systemic corruption stifle economic growth and enable criminal networks to thrive. Authoritarian regimes in the region fuel migration, crime, and cross-border instability, while external powers—most notably China—exploit governance gaps through opaque infrastructure projects and debt diplomacy, deepening authoritarian influence. Together, these forces erode state capacity, destabilize the region, and pose a direct challenge to US security and economic prosperity.

Stable, transparent governance in LAC reduces migration pressures, disrupts criminal networks, and creates economic opportunities that benefit both US and Latin American citizens. As the United States reassesses its foreign assistance strategy, democracy assistance can be enacted as a strategic investment to make the hemisphere—including the United States—stronger, safer, and more prosperous. We identify three core issues that pose the greatest challenges but promise the greatest rewards if addressed, and provide recommendations to streamline assistance, expand its scope, and engage business and local actors as funders and partners.

Ultimately, democracy assistance in the region remains one of the most cost-effective investments to advance shared security and prosperity.

Regional challenges to democracy and governance

LAC is confronting a convergence of three interlinked challenges that erode governance, destabilize societies, and undermine US security and economic interests. Each reinforces the others and fuels the migration and crime that strain the region. The United States should therefore prioritize addressing these challenges through targeted foreign assistance and investment.

Transnational organized crime and insecurity

Transnational organized crime (TOC) has evolved into one of the most destabilizing forces in LAC. Once localized, criminal groups have grown into sophisticated, multinational networks that traffic drugs, weapons, and people across borders while infiltrating political systems. These networks now operate across nearly every corner of the region, both benefiting from and contributing to weak rule of law and institutional resilience.

Gangs and TOC actors are among the main drivers of insecurity in the region. Although the region comprises less than 10 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for roughly one-third of global homicides. Central America maintains high levels of insecurity, while countries such as Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru have experienced sharp increases in violent crime as cartels and gangs battle for control of trafficking routes, urban neighborhoods, and illicit economies. The costs are profound: Latin American Public Opinion Project data show that intentions to emigrate are significantly higher among individuals exposed to crime, while nearly one-third of private sector firms in Latin America cite crime as a major obstacle to doing business, with direct losses averaging 7 percent of sales. Insecurity is not only displacing communities but also undermining prosperity and eroding trust in governments.

The drug trade remains one of the most profitable and damaging arms of TOC. Mexican cartels—particularly the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel—are the hemisphere’s principal suppliers of fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin. Their operations extend beyond Mexico and the United States, reaching deep into Colombia, Ecuador, Central America, and increasingly Canada. In 2024, US Customs and Border Protection seized over 27,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border—up from 14,700 pounds in 2022. The human toll is staggering: Fentanyl overdoses now kill more than seventy thousand people annually in the United States.

TOC represents not only a law enforcement problem but also a profound institutional and governance challenge. These groups thrive in contexts marked by weak institutions, porous borders, and entrenched impunity. Venezuela’s institutional collapse, for example, directly enabled the rapid growth of the Tren de Aragua gang from one prison to over ten countries. Once established, criminal networks act as corrosive forces—penetrating police forces, judicial systems, militaries, local governments, and even segments of the private sector. Their influence extends into the electoral arena as well: In Mexico’s recent elections, criminal actors not only financed campaigns for local candidates but also threatened and assassinated others, further distorting political competition and undermining democratic accountability. Left unchecked, TOC erodes public trust, distorts markets, and makes effective governance nearly impossible, fueling a self-reinforcing cycle of violence, displacement, and state fragility.

Case study: Ecuador’s fight against insecurity

The once relatively stable country of Ecuador has become a battleground among Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in recent years, with authorities estimating that 70 percent of the world’s cocaine passes through its ports. As Ecuador has emerged as a vital transit country, Mexican DTOs have partnered with local crime syndicates to deepen their control in the country, buying the influence of politicians, judges, and security officials. The main actors vying for control of drug shipment routes include the Sinaloa Cartel, its rival the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and their affiliated local crime syndicates. These structures tax and protect cocaine flows moving from border regions toward export terminals, targeting trucking firms, port and warehouse staff, and local authorities.

Ecuador’s security crisis, however, is not simply a matter of state versus gangs, but of deep institutional infiltration. The landmark Metástasis investigation (2023-25) exposed how judges, prosecutors, police officers, politicians, a former head of the prison authority, and other high-ranking officials systematically protected or advanced the interests of organized crime for years. In exchange for cash, gold, luxury cars, and other benefits, officials allegedly released gang leaders, altered prison conditions, and sabotaged investigations.

Despite these challenges, Ecuador’s government—reelected in 2025 with a mandate to confront organized crime—has pledged to continue the fight. Yet its experience highlights a critical lesson: Defeating gangs and cartels cannot be achieved solely through crackdowns or arrests; it also requires rebuilding institutions.

In many countries, governments have proven unable or unwilling to meaningfully confront TOC. Others have stepped up efforts to target these groups through mano dura policies or intensified security operations that, while capable of disrupting trafficking routes, cannot by themselves dismantle transnational criminal networks. Addressing the governance gaps that allow these organizations to thrive is therefore crucial. In this context, US leadership remains essential. Given the cross-border nature of these networks, lasting, viable solutions demand a coordinated regional response. By leveraging its diplomatic influence, security partnerships, military capabilities, and development tools—including technical assistance, institutional support, and investment incentives—the United States can help foster cross-border cooperation, strengthen judicial and prosecutorial capacity, and reinforce institutions to shield them from criminal infiltration. Paired with diplomatic and intelligence support, democracy assistance can play a critical role in disrupting organized crime, safeguarding US security interests, and creating the conditions for more prosperous and resilient communities across the hemisphere.

Rule of law and economic development

Declining rule of law has become an increasingly urgent concern in LAC, as regional indicators have steadily worsened in recent years and several countries have registered some of the steepest declines worldwide. This deterioration both enables transnational organized crime and authoritarianism and imposes enormous costs on national economies. Research by the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center shows that the rule of law is the single most influential factor for long-term economic growth and societal well-being. Liberalizing markets is not enough: Legal clarity, judicial independence, and accountability are the foundations of effective governance and thriving economies. This is particularly relevant in Latin America, where corruption remains the region’s Achilles’ heel—undermining public spending, fueling fiscal deficits, and weakening financial oversight. Across the region, higher corruption levels are consistently associated with lower gross domestic product per capita and reduced foreign direct investment, costing countries and investors billions in lost growth and opportunity

A particularly distorting force in the region’s economy is the prevalence of kleptocratic networks. These are not isolated acts of graft, but coordinated, systematic efforts to capture state resources and extract rents for political and economic gain. Such networks often comprise coalitions of corrupt political elites, complicit business actors, and criminal organizations. They co-opt the judiciary and prosecutors, while silencing investigations and oversight bodies. Their actions stifle competition, discourage entrepreneurship, and produce unfair monopolies that sideline foreign investors, while draining public coffers of resources needed for development.

The scale of these operations can be staggering. In Venezuela, over the past two decades, ruling party figures and business allies have been suspected of siphoning off as much as $30 billion in public funds through transnational schemes involving front companies, illicit contracts, and offshore accounts. This systemic kleptocracy has not only enriched elites but also accelerated Venezuela’s economic collapse, fueling one of the worst migration crises in the region, including to the United States. In Peru, the Club de la Construcción scandal revealed how an informal cartel of major construction companies colluded to divide up public works contracts in exchange for bribes to officials in the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The scheme operated for more than a decade, was worth billions in inflated contracts, and sidelined honest competitors while draining infrastructure budgets.

Case study: The Dominican Republic’s success story

The Dominican Republic illustrates how strengthening the rule of law can improve governance and unlock economic opportunity. Since President Luis Abinader took office in 2020, the government has carried out anti-corruption reforms. The administration appointed an independent attorney general and empowered the public ministry to investigate and prosecute high-level corruption cases. The government has also advanced transparency and digitalization reforms to make interactions with public agencies—especially in procurement—more open, efficient, and resistant to abuse. In addition, the country has aligned with key recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force, including by passing a revamped Anti-money Laundering and Illicit Finance Law, which has constrained kleptocratic networks and organized crime.

These measures have begun to restore trust in public institutions. Procurement processes are now more transparent and competitive––with twenty thousand new suppliers registered—while new safeguards better protect against corruption. Since 2020, the Dominican Republic’s score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index has improved by eight points. Investor confidence has followed: Foreign direct investment reached record highs in 2024, while trade with the United States expanded sharply. US goods exports to the Dominican Republic grew to $13 billion that year, producing a $5.5 billion trade surplus for the United States.

Some of the region’s largest corruption scandals have been uncovered by investigative journalists and independent prosecutors. Yet in many cases, impunity prevails, and little progress is made toward prevention or sustained accountability. Strong judicial institutions, effective anti-corruption reforms, and governance are essential for stability and growth. Predictable, rules-based environments make countries far better partners for both domestic and US businesses—creating jobs, expanding markets, and strengthening local economies. Such efforts can also reduce migration pressures, as corruption has been shown to drive both legal and irregular migration. As with TOC, for the United States, supporting rule-of-law reforms is therefore a strategic investment in building a more prosperous, democratic, and secure hemisphere.

Countering authoritarian influence

LAC is home to several resilient democracies that remain close US allies and important trading partners. Yet the region also contains some of the world’s most entrenched dictatorships—Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua—which pose direct threats to stability. Between these extremes lie eight nations that Freedom House classifies as “partly free,” many of which experienced additional democratic declines in 2025. Countering democratic backsliding and protecting the global order is not a values-based mission; it is essential to safeguarding US security, economic interests, and the long-term prosperity of the Western Hemisphere.

The region’s authoritarian regimes illustrate the stakes. Economic collapse and repression have forced 7.7 million Venezuelans, 500,000 Cubans, and tens of thousands of Nicaraguans to flee over the past decade. These governments also generate acute security risks. Nicaragua has positioned itself as a conduit for extra-regional migration, inviting travelers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to enter visa free and transit toward the US border. The Daniel Ortega regime has further been linked to targeted harassment and even assassinations of dissidents abroad, including the 2025 killing in Costa Rica of Roberto Samcam Ruiz, a retired Army major and government critic.

Similarly, the consolidation of Venezuela’s dictatorship has transformed the country into a hub for criminal organizations, including Colombian paramilitary groups and Tren de Aragua. The Nicolás Maduro regime has hosted the Wagner Group while continuing to rely on Russian military advisors, Iranian oil technicians, and Chinese surveillance systems to tighten internal control and repress dissent. Members of the regime have been linked to drug trafficking––most notably through the illicit military network Cartel de los Soles––and, in late 2024, Maduro threatened to invade neighboring Guyana.

At the same time, external authoritarian powers—especially China—are expanding their footprints, particularly in “partly free” states where institutional checks are weak. China exploits governance gaps through surveillance technology, opaque infrastructure deals, and strategic investments in critical sectors—often at the expense of US influence and market access. Over the past decade, China invested $73 billion in Latin America’s raw materials sector, including refineries and processing plants for coal, lithium, copper, natural gas, oil, and uranium. In Peru, Chinese firms paid $3 billion to acquire two major electricity suppliers, giving them what experts describe as near-monopoly control over the country’s power distribution and edging out competitors. Beijing also provides critical technology to regional authoritarian governments and at-risk democracies. In Bolivia, the government deployed Huawei’s “Safe Cities” surveillance systems, raising concerns about mass data collection, particularly during elections.

Case study: The cost of partnering with authoritarian regimes

Under President Rafael Correa, Ecuador—alongside Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez—pursued closer ties with foreign authoritarian powers, betting heavily on Chinese financing and infrastructure. A centerpiece of this strategy was the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project, awarded under opaque terms to Chinese firms, primarily Sinohydro, as part of an $11 billion package of oil-backed loans and infrastructure deals.

The project soon became a symbol of the risks of such arrangements. The dam has been plagued by structural flaws, including more than seventeen thousand cracks, severe environmental damage, and corruption allegations implicating senior officials. State agencies attempted to downplay or conceal the problems, but by 2024 the facility had ceased functioning altogether. Experts estimated that repairing the damage could cost tens of millions of dollars, erasing much of the project’s intended economic benefit. Beyond its technical failures, Coca Codo Sinclair left Ecuador financially vulnerable. In 2022, the government was forced into arbitration and subsequently renegotiated more than $4 billion in debt with Beijing, further compromising its fiscal position and weakening investor confidence. The episode illustrates how opaque partnerships with authoritarian powers can undermine democratic accountability and damage economic stability.

These developments underscore the importance of countering authoritarianism in LAC as both a security and economic priority for the United States and the region. Betting on democratic renewal in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela is critical to restoring stability in the hemisphere. At the same time, it is equally important to strengthen “at-risk” democracies to prevent further backsliding. Targeted investments in political party development, anti-corruption reforms, and transparency measures can bolster resilience in these states and reduce the appeal of authoritarian alternatives. Pushing back against China’s growing economic and geopolitical influence in the hemisphere is also essential. By leveraging diplomatic and trade tools, the United States can position itself as a credible alternative to China—particularly by mobilizing investment, fostering public-private partnerships, and advancing governance reforms that strengthen transparency and accountability. Doing so is vital for freedom and security in the region and creates opportunities for business and investment.

Recommendations

Insecurity, weak rule of law, and authoritarianism represent growing threats to freedom and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere. As outlined above, TOC, entrenched corruption, and authoritarian regimes impose heavy economic costs on LAC and undermine democratic governance. At the same time, these forces drive mass migration, placing immense strain on transit and destination countries. Tackling these challenges is a strategic win-win: It can enhance US security and economic interests while advancing stability and prosperity in the region.

As the United States reassesses its foreign policy and democracy assistance strategy in LAC, it should make use of its full range of diplomatic, security, trade, and investment mechanisms—including targeted democracy assistance—to address these challenges.

Move beyond grants to expand the toolkit

The proposed shift toward an investment- and trade-driven foreign policy can go hand-in-hand with democracy assistance and reform. The United States can mobilize financial and diplomatic tools to expand investment as an alternative to Chinese influence, while incentivizing governance, transparency, and accountability reforms that strengthen the region’s resilience against the challenges outlined above.

• Leverage the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide an alternative to Chinese financing and invest in projects that strengthen democratic resilience through economic modernization, digitalization, and high-quality infrastructure—particularly in areas vulnerable to authoritarian influence. As Congress prepares to revisit the DFC’s authorizing legislation, it should ensure the agency has long-term funding to deploy its range of tools—including debt financing, equity investments, and political risk insurance—across the region.
• Work with Congress to pass the Americas Act to establish regional trade, investment, and people-to-people partnerships with like-minded nations, fostering long-term private sector development. Use this framework to advance transparency and institutional autonomy reforms—particularly through the proposed Americas Institute for Digital Governance and Transnational Criminal Investigative Units—to ensure partner countries strengthen anti-corruption prevention, detection, and prosecution.
• Use regional forums—such as the Summit of the Americas—to advocate for governance, security, transparency, and accountability reforms to strengthen the resilience of democratic allies and counter authoritarian regimes. The United States should link political reform benchmarks to investment incentives, offering “carrots” for change through regional development commitments.

Ensure democracy assistance makes business sense

A safer and more democratic Western Hemisphere directly benefits economic development and business. The United States should position its domestic and the Latin American private sectors as active partners in strengthening democratic resilience, not just as passive beneficiaries of stability.

• Revive and operationalize America Creceto incentivize and promote reform-linked investments, infrastructure projects, and job creation across the region to counter Chinese influence and advance US interests while bolstering political will through the DFC. Participation should be tied to clear benchmarks on transparency, labor rights, and legal predictability.
• Forge public-private partnerships that co-finance civic education, anti-corruption initiatives, and local development projects, particularly in high-risk areas vulnerable to TOC recruitment and migration.
• Mobilize Latin America’s business elites—among the greatest beneficiaries of economic and democratic collaboration with the United States—to push for and co-fund democracy and governance programs in their home countries. Leading companies, philanthropic foundations, and chambers of commerce should be engaged as active partners in advancing reforms.
• Strengthen and engage with regional initiatives like the Alliance for Development in Democracy—championed by Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador—that integrate the private sector into democratic reform and good governance agendas.

Deploy whole-of-government tools

While the State Department plays a central role in US democracy assistance, the scale and interconnected nature of the region’s challenges—spanning security, rule of law, and authoritarian influence—demand a coordinated, whole-of-government approach.

• Leverage the Pentagon’s Defense Institution Building program to strengthen law enforcement reform, bolster rule-of-law resilience, and build institutional capacity to counter transnational crime and human trafficking.
• Provide technical assistance and legal expertise through the Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs to help countries develop national frameworks that protect transparency, law enforcement, and sovereignty in investment decisions.
• Double down on rule-of-law reforms and projects, particularly those targeting organized crime and corruption. Support vetted law enforcement units, independent anti-corruption actors, and judicial reform initiatives through US, private sector, and multilateral funding channels, including the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Open Government Partnership.
• Protect the key pillars of democratic institutions from co-optation by TOC, kleptocratic, or authoritarian actors. This must include courts, election management bodies, political parties, and critical government agencies such as those overseeing infrastructure, development, procurement, and public prosecution. Emphasis should be placed on institutional independence, combating and preventing corruption, and ensuring sustainable financing to strengthen resilience.
• Apply targeted sanctions, Global Magnitsky measures, and trade conditionality to dismantle kleptocratic networks, prosecute corrupt actors, and reward credible reformers.
• Advocate for and support the implementation of global security and anti-corruption standards—including recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force and its LAC branch, GAFILAT (Grupo de Acción Financiera de Latinoamérica), on money laundering, organized crime, and illicit finance—to disrupt TOC and kleptocratic funding networks while fostering safer and more competitive business environments.

Scale the power of local networks

Regional local actors—both within and outside of government—are often the most credible and resilient defenders of democratic governance. The United States should deepen its engagement with these networks while identifying and empowering new partners.

• Partner with trusted community institutions—including religious organizations, civic leaders, businesses, and grassroots groups—on programs that prevent gang recruitment, reduce crime, and promote integrity in high-risk areas.
• Strengthen governance mechanisms to build sustainable local capacity to counter corruption and transnational organized crime.
• Expand the partner ecosystem to include diaspora networks and local community groups, leveraging their resources, expertise, and transnational connections to reinforce democratic resilience.

Push back on regional and external authoritarian influence

Bipartisan US support for organized opposition in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has been a cornerstone of regional democracy policy and should be sustained and expanded. At the same time, Washington should back democratic movements and reformers across the hemisphere where authoritarian influence is taking hold.

• Sustain support for dissidents and democratic movements in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to prepare the ground for eventual political transitions.
• Invest in independent media.
• Support the next generation of democratic leaders through fellowships, trainings, and political party development, prioritizing authoritarian and high-risk states.
• Collaborate with electoral commissions, legislatures, and political parties with an emphasis on internal democracy, campaign transparency, and long-term institutionalization.
• Assist governments in auditing and renegotiating opaque infrastructure or digital agreements—particularly those with authoritarian powers—that undermine sovereignty, transparency, and public accountability.

The recommendations offered here provide a roadmap to confront the region’s most pressing security and prosperity threats by pairing diplomacy, trade, and investment tools with targeted democracy support. By leveraging the United States’ entrepreneurial capacity and its ability to mobilize multinational and public-private partnerships, reforms can be made more attractive, sustainable, and impactful. This is not charity—it is a strategic investment that advances both US and LAC interests.

At relatively low cost, democracy assistance strengthens governance and open markets in ways that directly serve US security and economic priorities. It helps dismantle transnational criminal organizations, kleptocratic networks, and corruption, while countering the growing influence of authoritarian regimes inside and outside the region. These efforts reduce the flow of illicit drugs and irregular migration, create more reliable markets for businesses, and build stronger partnerships with governments that share democratic values. The outcome is clear: a stronger, safer, and more prosperous hemisphere.

about the authors

Antonio Garrastazu serves as the senior director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Republican Institute (IRI). Prior to this role, he led IRI’s Center for Global Impact and from 2011 to 2018 was resident country director for Central America, Haiti, and Mexico. Garrastazu has worked in academe, the private sector, and government, serving in the Florida Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development under Governor Jeb Bush. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Florida, and a master’s and PhD in international studies from the University of Miami. 

Henrique Arevalo Poincot is a visiting fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center. A strategy and communications specialist with expertise spanning Europe and Latin America, Arevalo Poincot is pursuing his master’s degree in democracy and governance at Georgetown University.

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]]> https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/returning-ukraines-abducted-children-should-be-central-to-any-peace-plan/ Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:30:17 +0000 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/?p=891952 The United States should lead efforts to secure the release and return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. This could help build confidence in the peace process and boost efforts to end the war, writes Kristina Hook.

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]]> This week, the US Senate is holding a landmark Congressional hearing on Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children. Most will understandably frame the issue as a grave human rights crisis, but it is also much more. Rescuing Ukraine’s abducted children can help pave the way for peace, while allowing Russia’s crimes to go unpunished would set a disastrous precedent for global security.

Russia’s systematic removal, indoctrination, and militarization of Ukrainian children goes to the heart of the broader security dilemma that must be resolved before the war in Ukraine can end. Any credible conversation about peace negotiations or security guarantees for Ukraine must begin with a demonstration that the United States and its allies can meaningfully influence Russian behavior. Ensuring the safe return of these children is a concrete way to do that.

The scale of the crime is staggering. Ukrainian authorities have verified 19,456 children taken to Russian or Russian-occupied territories, while independent experts estimate the actual number of victims may exceed 35,000.

What is indisputable is that Russia’s mass deportations are now among the best-documented crimes of modern warfare. Among numerous other investigations, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab identified at least 210 facilities inside Russia or Russian-occupied territory where deported Ukrainian children have been sent for “re-education,” forced assimilation, and in many places, military-style training.

The evidence is overwhelming and includes coerced relocations, illegal adoptions and naturalization under Russian citizenship, ideological indoctrination aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity, and numerous violations of international law. This is not incidental collateral damage. It is a deliberate state policy of population transfer and Ukrainian national identity destruction; a Russian program that mirrors the legal definitions of numerous atrocity crimes, including genocide. 

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So far, it has only been possible to rescue a small fraction of abducted children. As of November 2025, 1,859 children have returned to Ukraine, while international experts estimate that 90 percent of the burden of rescue currently falls to Ukrainians themselves. 

Moscow’s refusal to facilitate repatriation and its ongoing efforts to conceal identities and locations underscores the impossibility of any stable post-war order without addressing this crime. Humanitarian language alone obscures a critical truth: The forced transfer of children is not a peripheral human rights issue; it is a central obstacle to any credible security settlement in Europe.

For months, United States and European officials have been exploring frameworks for eventual peace talks with Russia and long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. But these conversations often treat Russian atrocities, including child deportations, as adjacent to the real business of hard security. This is a mistake.

Russia’s abduction of children is a window into its strategic intent. The Kremlin campaign to kidnap young Ukrainians and turn them into Russians reveals that Moscow’s war is not merely about territory but about imperial restoration. If Vladimir Putin only sought to adjust borders, the millions spent on relocating, indoctrinating, and militarizing thousands of Ukrainian children would make little sense.

Putin’s ominous intent becomes clearer when viewed alongside Russia’s broader atrocities. The Russian ruler clearly seeks to diminish the demographic future of an entire neighboring nation, while preparing the next generation for future Russian military aggression.

The issue of abducted Ukrainian children is especially relevant for Ukrainians as they debate painful political compromises, territorial concessions, and security guarantees premised on Western assurances. If world leaders cannot secure the return of the most vulnerable victims of Russia’s aggression, how could Ukrainians trust that those same leaders can prevent Russia from reigniting the war or committing new atrocities?

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How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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Western policymakers insist that any post-war settlement must include credible enforcement mechanisms. But credibility is not defined by rhetoric; it is a matter of capability and political will. Right now, both are in question.

If the United States, with its immense military, diplomatic, and economic power, cannot compel Russia to return thousands of abducted Ukrainian children, it becomes harder to argue that Washington can deter further aggression or prevent violations of a future peace agreement. Ukrainians understand this reality well.

Demonstrating US leverage over Russia is therefore not merely symbolic. It is a strategic prerequisite to any durable peace. The United States has untapped tools at its disposal. These include sanctioning individuals and institutions directly involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children, while supporting multilateral accountability efforts. It should be also possible to condition further diplomatic engagement on verifiable steps toward repatriation. Meanwhile, the United States could lead a coordinated information effort to identify children and counter Russian concealment tactics.

These measures are proportional responses to atrocity crimes recognized under international law. The forcible transfer of children is a premeditated crime designed to shatter Ukraine’s future. A successful effort to bring Ukrainian children home will demonstrate that the United States can influence Russian behavior. This is a critical condition for any effective peace initiative.

Securing the return of abducted children would also help to build the trust needed for Ukrainian society to accept Western-backed security frameworks. After many failed efforts to constrain Russian aggression, Ukrainian society needs to know that Western promises are not empty.

Ignoring the issue, or relegating it to the humanitarian margins, undermines the very negotiations that the Trump administration is seeking to advance. Ending the war requires Ukrainian faith in international guarantees.

Child abduction is among the clearest moral red lines in global conflict. Failure to uphold this red line in Ukraine will invite repetition elsewhere. If Russia can abduct tens of thousands of children with impunity during a major European war and face no real consequences, then no norms protecting children in conflict can hold anywhere.

This week’s hearing marks an opportunity for Congress, the Trump administration, and Ukraine’s other partners to clarify that returning abducted Ukrainian children is not optional, negotiable, or separate from security discussions. It is central.

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Nov 27, 2025

While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree this week calling for an escalation in efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Human Rights

UkraineAlert Nov 25, 2025

Strengthening Ukraine’s wartime economy can set the stage for peace

By Zahar Hryniv

The US and Europe must take steps to strengthen Ukraine’s economic resilience if they wish to convince Putin that his dreams of outlasting the West are futile and persuade Russia to begin serious peace negotiations, writes Zahar Hryniv.

Conflict Economy & Business

UkraineAlert Dec 2, 2025

Ukraine peace plan must not include amnesty for Russian war crimes

By Ivan Horodyskyy

US President Donald Trump’s 28-point peace plan for Ukraine includes an amnesty for war crimes that critics say will only strengthen Putin’s sense of impunity and set the stage for more Russian aggression, writes Ivan Horodyskyy.

Conflict European Union

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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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and support our work

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]]> https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-peace-plan-must-not-include-amnesty-for-russian-war-crimes/ Tue, 02 Dec 2025 18:50:39 +0000 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/?p=891563 US President Donald Trump's 28-point peace plan for Ukraine includes an amnesty for war crimes that critics say will only strengthen Putin's sense of impunity and set the stage for more Russian aggression, writes Ivan Horodyskyy.

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]]> The recent Hollywood movie “Nuremberg” provided a timely reminder of the role played by Soviet consent in the creation and legitimacy of the International Military Tribunal established to prosecute Nazi leaders after World War II. The broad outlines of the tribunal had been agreed before the end of the war during the February 1945 Yalta Conference, with both Churchill and Roosevelt noting Stalin’s readiness to support the initiative.

The Soviet leader’s stance should probably not have come as such a surprise. His apparent enthusiasm for prosecuting Germany’s wartime leadership was not a reflection of faith in international justice or the rule of law, but due to his own personal experience with show trials during the 1930s. For Stalin, the trial of the Nazis was another political performance with a preordained outcome.

Several generations later, the Kremlin’s attitude appears to have changed little. Russian President Vladimir Putin stands accused of imprisoning his domestic opponents on politically motivated charges, but regards any attempt to hold Russia legally accountable for the invasion of Ukraine as unacceptable. This includes the efforts of Ukraine and its allies to create a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression, and extends to investigations conducted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

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One of the most striking provisions in US President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled 28-point Ukraine peace plan was a full amnesty for all parties for their actions during the war in Ukraine and an agreement not to make any claims or consider any complaints in future. While Trump’s initial plan has already been subject to multiple revisions, the idea of a blanket amnesty has sparked alarm and outrage among Ukrainians, with critics viewing it as a move to pardon all Russians responsible for war crimes in Ukraine.

The Trump peace plan first emerged just days after a Russian missile strike on a residential building in Ternopil that killed more than thirty people including seven children. Many Ukrainians recalled this attack following the publication of Trump’s plan, noting that it served to highlight the injustice of offering an amnesty for the vast quantity of crimes committed since the start of the full-scale invasion almost four years ago.

Some have also pointed out that failure to prosecute war crimes in Ukraine could have disastrous implications for the future of global security. “It would ruin international law and create a precedent that would encourage other authoritarian leaders to think that you can invade a country, kill people and erase their identity, and you will be rewarded with new territories,” commented Ukrainian Nobel prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk.

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Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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Addressing Russian war crimes in Ukraine is not only a matter of providing justice for victims. It is also essential in order to prevent further Kremlin aggression. While the legitimacy of the Nuremberg Tribunal continues to provoke discussion, few would argue that it provided important lessons for Germany and sent an unambiguous message that international aggression ends in defeat and accountability.

Russian society has never experienced anything comparable to Nuremberg. They was no accountability for the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968, or the invasion of Afghanistan. Since the fall of the USSR, there have been no systematic investigations into crimes committed during Russia’s Chechen wars, the 2008 invasion of Georgia, or the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

This absence of accountability has fueled a sense of impunity in the Kremlin and throughout Russian society that has been instrumental in creating the political climate for the current attack on Ukraine. Unless addressed, this historically rooted sense of Russian impunity will inevitably fuel further aggression.  

Advocates of the US-led peace initiative have suggested that the priority now should be securing peace rather than seeking justice. In reality, however, the two goals are interlinked. It is delusional to think that any future treaty obligations or declarations of non-aggression from Russia’s leaders can be trusted, especially if they are not held to account for the crimes of the past four years. 

It is important to recognize that many of the 28 points featured in the United States plan are realistic and could serve as the basis for a viable peace settlement. At the same time, it is also abundantly clear that the proposed amnesty for war crimes will only embolden the Kremlin. If adopted, it would encourage Russia to continue the invasion of Ukraine or escalate elsewhere in the Baltic region, the southern Caucasus, or Central Asia. That is clearly not in the interests of the United States, Europe, or the wider international community.

It is therefore vital to thoroughly investigate all war crimes committed in Ukraine and establish the facts in a manner that challenges Russia’s sense of impunity and allows for the rehabilitation of victims. The Nuremberg Tribunal did not succeed in ending wars of aggression, but it did establish a precedent of legal responsibility. If we now forego this principle of accountability entirely, progress toward a safer world will not be possible.

Ivan Horodyskyy is an associate professor of the School of Public Management at the Ukrainian Catholic University.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Nov 27, 2025

While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree this week calling for an escalation in efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Human Rights

UkraineAlert Nov 25, 2025

Trump’s latest Ukraine peace proposal sparks strong Republican reaction

By Doug Klain

Congress is clearly eager to help Trump force Russia to end its war in Ukraine. Capitalizing on the revised peace framework agreed by US and Ukrainian negotiators will now require action from both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, writes Doug Klain.

Conflict Financial Sanctions and Economic Coercion

UkraineAlert Nov 25, 2025

Strengthening Ukraine’s wartime economy can set the stage for peace

By Zahar Hryniv

The US and Europe must take steps to strengthen Ukraine’s economic resilience if they wish to convince Putin that his dreams of outlasting the West are futile and persuade Russia to begin serious peace negotiations, writes Zahar Hryniv.

Conflict Economy & Business

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

Follow us on social media
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]]> https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/how-syrias-grassroots-civil-peace-committees-can-help-prevent-intercommunal-conflict/ Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:58:29 +0000 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/?p=890652 Syria’s local civil peace committees offer an important model for dealing with the country’s deeply rooted social divisions.

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]]> In late September, violence erupted in the countryside around Suqaylabiyah, a large Christian town in Syria’s Hama governorate. The area had generally avoided the type of sectarian violence that has plagued other parts of the country since the December 8, 2024 collapse of the Assad regime. But an unsolved rape case in nearby Hawrat Amurin fueled new anger and tensions, eventually leading to the kidnapping and torture of a local soldier by Alawi insurgents. The next day, members of the soldier’s family entered the village near where he was kidnapped, demanding he be released. At the same time, Sunnis from other nearby communities stormed Hawrat Amurin, looting homes and killing an elderly man.

Security forces quickly intervened and the mob fled. In response to the rapidly deteriorating situation, the head priest of Suqaylabiyah held several dialogue sessions with Sunni and Alawi community leaders and local security officials. They agreed to form a committee to continue intercommunal dialogue and to address any future disputes before they turned violent.

This impromptu civil peace committee is not the first of its kind in post-Assad Syria. The first such committee was formed in Tartous’s Qadmus district in December 2024 by the town’s Ismaili population to address disputes with their Alawi neighbors and ease the arrival of the new government’s forces to the area. Since then, similar committees have been formed across parts of Damascus, Homs, Tartous, Latakia, and rural Hama. They are largely oriented toward resolving sectarian-related problems, whether between the Sunni security forces and Alawi locals, or between neighborhoods and villages of different sects.

The authors have traveled regularly to Syria over the past year, visiting with local security officials and activists across much of Homs, Hama, Tartous, and Latakia studying the challenges and successes of local peace-building in the wake of dictator Bashar al-Assad’s fall. Civil peace committees and similar systems have consistently stood out as an important aspect of trust-building and dispute resolution. While they have proven highly effective in some areas, they are only present in a few parts of the country. At times, they face opposition from government officials. Still, they offer one important model for dealing with the country’s decades of deeply rooted social divisions and the bouts of intercommunal violence that continue to leave Syrians dead.

The role of civil peace committees

Damascus formed a National Civil Peace Committee in the aftermath of the March 6 coastal massacres, theoretically tasked with preventing violence and easing intercommunal tensions through mediation. In June, this committee made headlines when news broke that one of the Assad regime’s most notorious criminals, Fadi Saqr, had effectively joined the committee. His inclusion reflected Damascus’s choice to try and maintain calm via close engagement with former regime-affiliated security and military officers, who some members of the new government argue will help prevent their former colleagues from engaging in renewed insurgent activity.

This controversial national body, however, has nothing to do with the civil peace committees organically forming at the local level in several municipalities across Syria. These committees vary in size, function, and form, but they all seek to prevent violence and improve communication at the hyper-local level. This often involves connecting locals to the new security apparatus via trusted community figures.

It is difficult to say with certainty how many civil peace committees are active in Syria, since many do not conform to the name even when they function in a similar capacity. Most of the more structured and explicitly named committees are concentrated in the southwestern Damascus suburbs, Homs, and Syria’s coast—reflecting both the concentration of strong activist networks and complex sectarian communal dynamics.

There are, however, core commonalities among the groups. Committees are usually formed around a council of local notables. Their success is largely dependent on two factors: 1) the attitudes and acceptance of local security officials and 2) the initiative and determination of local civil society. At their core, these committees facilitate communication between the security officials and locals who are too afraid to communicate with them directly. One Christian activist in Baniyas explained the importance of this role to the authors succinctly:

• “Fear is rooted in isolated violations and a rejection of government narratives . . . direct government outreach cannot fix this fear because locals don’t trust the government’s words or actions. Rather, they need civil society intermediaries.”

Due to their organic formation, each civil peace committee has its own culture and practices. In Jaramana, according to one member, the civil peace committee is very strong, includes representatives of all sects, and even has its own security force. In Alawi communities, the committees’ main roles are improving communication between locals and security officials and working with officials from Syria’s General Security Service, the country’s core internal security force, to address concerns and violations. Local officials use the committees to disseminate information, conduct peaceful disarmament campaigns, and gather complaints about misconduct of government personnel.

In other places, such as Homs and parts of Damascus, committees are equally focused on resolving intercommunal and housing, land, and property (HLP) disputes. For example, the committees in the suburbs of Daraya, Moadimiyah, and Sahnaya worked together to return civilians kidnapped and arrested during the violence there in May and to stop the attacks on the nearby Alawi suburb of al-Somoriyeh in September.

Expansion of informal intermediaries and religious bodies

More common than the formal civil peace committees are informal networks and individuals who do the same work as committees but under different names. Many of these networks are built around religious figures, as opposed to the aforementioned committees built around activists and administrative leaders of local towns. For example, in Homs, a small network of Christian priests, Sunni sheikhs, and Alawi leaders work together with the city’s mukhtars and security officials to resolve disputes and calm intercommunal tensions. While not a formal committee or council, these men are able to use their personal connections to each other and their respective communities to resolve many smaller issues.

In Homs’s Old City, the Syriac Orthodox Santa Maria Church is the main actor for settling disputes involving the neighborhood’s Christian population. The church’s leader, Father Yuhanna, has helped mediate disputes that occur between the residents and others in the city, but he also helps ease tensions when security officials conduct arrests or investigations of Christian men in the area. These religious and community leaders interact directly with the city’s security officials and the governorate’s political affairs director to discuss the implementation of laws and issues of government abuse.

In Salamiyah, the long-standing National Ismaili Council plays the same role through its various subcommittees. This council has been crucial for bridging the gap between the new government and the Ismaili population more generally, as well as the Alawi and Shia populations in Salamiyah specifically.

But in other places, the intermediary networks are much weaker and rely on only one or two individuals. This is particularly true in the coast, where Alawi communities face a double hurdle: a lack of historical civil society and extreme distrust and fear between themselves and the new government. Still, in some places, such as Tartous’s Sheikh Badr and Latakia’s Beit Yashout, there are individual men and women who do the same work as civil peace committees: improving communication between locals and security officials and resolving arrest- and security-related disputes.

For example, the mayor of Beit Yashout serves as a key communication node between the district security official and the local towns and villages. Whenever news of a large security convoy entering the area emerges, locals quickly message the mayor, who in turn calls the district security official to convey their concerns and learn what is happening. He then sends messages to a wide network of local leaders and media activists, sharing what the official told him and urging calm (the authors witnessed this first hand during a visit in September). He also regularly sits with security personnel at checkpoints to help encourage closer relations between them and the locals. In a region wracked with fear, these basic actions are critical for reducing tensions and preventing reckless actions by terrified locals and security forces.

Reconciliation committees

Both the formal civil peace committees and informal networks are new phenomena which have been met with mixed reactions by local officials. But there is a third type of dispute resolution mechanism, which has for decades been a staple of Syrian society: the reconciliation committee (majlis al-sulhi). However, these committees differ significantly from civil peace committees both in scope and the type of communities they serve.

Reconciliation committees focus almost exclusively on HLP issues for displaced people. The bulk of the dispute resolution conducted by the bodies are between those community members who were displaced and those who remained under the regime. They are most commonly found in Sunni communities in Idlib, Hama, and Homs, and they rely heavily on close family and communal ties for mediation. Nonetheless, these committees have long been embraced by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-backed Salvation Government in Idlib, setting a precedent for the new government’s acceptance of such civil peace-oriented systems. This acceptance should now be extended to the civil peace committee model.

Creating opportunities for peace

Creating lines of communication may be the most important function of these different systems. They often provide the only means of engagement with the authorities in places where many people are too afraid to approach officials on their own. These committees and networks also play a central role in resolving intercommunal and community-state disputes before they spiral into serious violence, as happened in Hamrat Amurin in September.

Much of the work of civil peace committees is initiated by motivated individuals who take it upon themselves to advance intercommunal trust-building. Many Ismaili and Christian activists who have been involved in these networks since December have stressed the same thing to the authors across multiple field trips—that local groups must assert themselves to the new government and force it to work with them. This approach has proven to work, but it is also a difficult concept for many activists, especially those from the Alawi community, to embrace when there is so much fear and distrust, and inconsistent government treatment of civil society more broadly.

Thus, most activists working in civil peace and dispute resolution issues emphasize the need for officials to genuinely engage with their work while giving them the space to operate freely. Members of multiple committees also discussed with us the need for logistical support to expand their networks, linking committees across districts to help share experiences and strategize communication and dispute resolution approaches. Such regional networks would give rural areas a more grounded view of the situation in other regions, undermining the chokehold that social media misinformation has on much of the country.

Inconsistent government limitations

Yet despite the benefits of this system, many civil peace activists across the country are still facing obstacles from the new government. While committees in places such as Qadmus, Damascus, and Salamiyah have seen many successes, the experiences of cities such as Baniyas, Masyaf, and Dreikish show how reliant this system is on a cooperative local government.

In Baniyas, a civil peace committee was formed after the extreme violence the city experienced on March 6, bringing together prominent Sunni and Alawi activists and religious leaders. Yet while it gave space for the Alawi community to voice complaints and work with local officials, their demands have been consistently ignored. The committee has been described by some former members as essentially being a mouthpiece for the local government, with no real agency of its own.

Masyaf’s short-lived committee faced a more direct challenge from its local government. In June, activists in the city gathered more than five hundred people to hold the country’s first-ever local elections for a civil council. Prior to the election, the organizers had received approval from the district director, Muhammad Taraa, to create the new body. Yet as soon as it was formed, Taraa began to oppose it. After sidelining and ignoring the new council for a month, Taraa called on the Hama Political Affairs Office to order its disbandment. Civil peace work in the district has now gone partially underground, with only a small civil peace committee now working exclusively on securing the release of ex-regime soldiers from the district’s rural villages who were captured by opposition forces during the final battles of the war.

Tartous’s Dreikish District has largely been another success story for the role of civil peace committees, but recent pressure from some local officials may undermine the positive steps that have been made. Like with the Ismailis in Qadmus, a small group of respected and educated Alawi leaders formed a committee in Dreikish the day after the regime fell. These men worked closely with Damascus’s newly appointed security official, fostering a deep bond of trust that endures today. However, the official was later transferred out of Dreikish, and his replacement was executed by local insurgents on March 6. The committee members were able to save the lives of the rest of the General Security officers that night, but the murder of the official has resulted in new pressure on the area since March. Now, two of the districts’ security officials still work closely with the committee, while a third views the body with distrust and refuses to engage with it. Committee members stress the importance of the close personal relationship they had built with their first official as well as the official killed on March 6, and the role these personal friendships and animosities play in the effectiveness of their work today.

Even when local government officials do embrace these committees and informal networks, their ability to address local grievances remains limited. These systems almost always engage with security officials—representatives of the Interior Ministry charged with overseeing the Internal Security Forces. Thus, issues such as the behavior of checkpoint personnel, detentions, and communication are more easily addressed, but these local officials have no say over the more pressing structural issues such as economic recovery, the settlement problem, political demands, and services. The inability of local security officials to address these topics limits the trust-building impacts of their engagement.

Empowering committees

Despite the potentially significant benefits of an expanded and empowered civil peace committee network in Syria, this system is largely isolated to addressing the symptoms of social discord. These committees should form one part of a broader approach to civil peace, bridging organizations and wider Syrian society with good governance practices to gradually break down the anger and loss felt between Syrian communities. One former civil defense member in Aleppo, who now works on humanitarian and civil peace issues, described the problem to the authors this way:

• “Civil peace itself is not a means but an end. . . it is not possible to make people accept this idea so quickly. . . but the government is burning this by trying to make everyone accept each other in a few days. They don’t understand civil peace. . . In all of Syria, there are civilian intermediary offices working between General Security and the people. . . But these offices solve the problems only after they occur. We have to focus on dealing with the source of conflict, not just one symptom.”

Some committees and civil peace activists fear that expansion could result in backlash from the government. Licensing issues and anxiety offer state monitoring stem from the government’s unclear and discouraging policies toward civil society. Instead, Damascus should understand the benefits these committees can provide as allies for civil peace.

The Syrian government should create and enforce a clear policy for how its security and political officials engage with civil society organizations that work on civil peace and sectarian issues. This policy should encourage the creation of independent civil peace committees across districts and sub-districts experiencing sectarian tensions, particularly in the coast, Homs, and rural Hama.

Damascus should ensure that officials engage with these committees in a genuine and honest manner to maintain their trust with their own communities, without which these committees are entirely ineffectual. Lastly, Damascus should expand the type of officials and government bodies that engage with these systems to begin addressing non-security-related local issues. This would increase peoples’ trust in both these intermediaries and the local government, while also providing more senior officials with granular insights into the needs of these area.

International organizations can support this work by funding trainings and dialogue sessions that bring together committees and activists from different parts of the country to share their experiences and best practices. Countries such as Turkey and Qatar that provide training to Syria’s Ministry of Interior personnel can also support these local peace efforts by including civil engagement and communication courses when training security officials.

Despite their mixed track record, these committees have laid forth a blueprint for preventing intercommunal violence and trust-building with the new government. Now they should be expanded across more areas and empowered by Damascus to operate freely rather than hindered. Taken together, this approach will help prevent further conflict while strengthening the new government’s ties to local communities across the country.

---

Gregory Waters is a nonresident fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

Kayla Koontz is a PhD candidate at the Carter School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and a researcher at the Syrian Archive.

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]]> https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/while-trump-talks-peace-putin-is-escalating-efforts-to-erase-ukraine/ Thu, 27 Nov 2025 13:53:15 +0000 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/?p=891082 Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree this week calling for an escalation in efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, writes Peter Dickinson.

The post While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

]]> US President Donald Trump has this week declared “tremendous progress” toward ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. This upbeat assessment comes following a sudden flurry of diplomatic activity sparked by a 28-point peace proposal that caught almost everyone by surprise, marking a new twist in Trump’s longstanding efforts to broker a peace deal.

Not everyone shares the US leader’s optimistic outlook. Skeptics note that while the United States and Ukraine have now reportedly agreed upon the broad outlines of a future settlement, there is very little to suggest that Russia is similarly interested in peace. On the contrary, the Kremlin has responded to Trump’s latest overtures by ruling out any major concessions and signaling that Moscow remains firmly focused on the maximalist goals of the invasion.

As talks between American, Ukrainian, and Russian officials continue, Russian President Vladimir Putin has underlined his true intentions by issuing a presidential decree calling for an escalation in efforts to eradicate all traces of Ukrainian identity from the approximately 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control.

The decree, entitled “Russian National Policy Until 2036,” was published on November 25 and is set to come into force in January 2026, Reuters reports. It calls on the Russian authorities in occupied Ukraine to “adopt additional measures to strengthen overall Russian civic identity.” The policy document also praises the invasion of Ukraine for “creating conditions for restoring the unity of the historical territories of the Russian state.”

This bureaucratic language is an attempt to sanitize the Kremlin’s ongoing campaign to erase Ukrainian national identity. Throughout Russian-occupied regions in the south and east of the country, Moscow has instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population while systematically targeting the symbols of Ukrainian statehood, language, heritage, and culture.

Wherever Russian troops advance, local populations are subjected to large-scale arrests, with anyone deemed a potential threat to the occupation authorities likely to disappear into a vast network of camps and prisons. Victims typically include elected officials, journalists, religious leaders, activists, and military veterans. A UN investigation published in spring 2025 found that these detentions constituted a crime against humanity.

Those who remain are pressured to accept Russian citizenship or face being deprived of access to essentials such as healthcare, pensions, and banking services. In line with Kremlin legislation adopted earlier this year, property owners who refuse Russian passports can be evicted from their homes and deported. Meanwhile, schoolchildren are being taught a heavily militarized Kremlin curriculum that demonizes Ukrainians while praising Russian imperialism and glorifying the invasion of their country. Any parents who resist these policies risk losing custody of their children.

The most notorious element of Moscow’s campaign to extinguish Ukrainian identity is the mass abduction of Ukrainian children. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, around twenty thousand victims are believed to have been taken to Russia and subjected to ideological indoctrination designed to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and impose a Russian identity. In 2023, the International Criminal Court of The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over his personal involvement in these child abductions.

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Russian policies in occupied Ukraine serve as a chilling blueprint for Putin’s future actions if he is able to establish control over the entire country. Indeed, Russia is already actively seeking to depopulate large parts of Ukraine that remain beyond Moscow’s grasp. In front line areas throughout southern Ukraine, the Russian military has embarked on an unprecedented campaign of targeted drone strikes against the civilian population that has killed hundreds and been branded a “human safari.” A recent United Nations probe concluded that these attacks are war crimes with the goal of making whole towns and cities unlivable.

Likewise, during 2025 Russia has intensified the missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine’s civilian population and the country’s critical infrastructure in an apparent attempt to spark fresh waves of refugees. Due in part to these attacks, Ukrainian civilian casualties rose by 27 percent during the first ten months of the year, according to the United Nations Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

Putin’s posture during peace talks has raised further fundamental questions over his willingness to coexist with an independent and sovereign Ukraine. Ever since the initial round of negotiations in spring 2022, Russia has consistently demanded the comprehensive demilitarization of Ukraine. This has included calls for strict limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and the categories of weapons the country is allowed to possess, along with a ban on NATO membership or any other form of military cooperation with Western partners.

Russia’s insistence on an internationally isolated and disarmed Ukraine remains at the heart of the current negotiations. This should serve as a massive red flag for anyone who still believes that Putin is ready for peace. The Russian dictator obviously has no intention of abandoning the reconquest of Ukraine and aims to resume the invasion in more favorable circumstances once Ukraine has been stripped of allies and rendered defenseless.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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Putin’s determination to continue the invasion of Ukraine should come as no surprise. While Trump sees the current war as a geopolitical real estate deal, Putin believes he is on an historic mission to reverse the Soviet collapse and revive the Russian Empire. This explains his otherwise inexplicable obsession with ending Ukrainian independence, which Putin has come to view as the ultimate symbol of modern Russia’s humiliating fall from grace.

On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Putin called Ukraine “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” But his desire to extinguish Ukrainian statehood goes far beyond any toxic feelings of shared kinship. For Putin, the consolidation of a democratic, European Ukraine poses an existential threat to authoritarian Russia that could serve as a catalyst for the next stage in an imperial retreat that begin with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Haunted by the people power uprisings that brought down the USSR, he will do almost anything to prevent a repeat.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine first began with the 2014 seizure of Crimea, Putin’s crusade to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin orbit has come to dominate his reign. In pursuit of this goal, he has sacrificed Russia’s relationship with the democratic world, while also doing untold damage to the country’s economic prosperity and international standing. After everything that has happened, he can hardly now accept a peace deal that leaves 80 percent of Ukraine permanently hostile to Russia and firmly embedded in the West. Putin’s propaganda machine is perhaps the most powerful in the world, but even his most skilled media managers would struggle to spin such an outcome as anything other than a disastrous Russian defeat.

Putin’s latest presidential decree demanding further efforts to create a Ukraine without Ukrainians underlines the absurdity of attempts to find any meaningful middle ground between Moscow and Kyiv. With a compromise peace out of the question, Putin’s plan is to keep fighting while hoping to outlast the West and exhaust Ukraine. He will continue to engage in negotiations with the United States as a tactic to stall further sanctions and divide his enemies, but there is virtually zero chance of Russia voluntarily accepting any deal that guarantees the continued existence of a Ukrainian state.

This does not mean that Putin cannot be forced to end his invasion. But it does mean that current efforts to broker a negotiated settlement are doomed to fail. Putin is convinced that in order to correct the historical injustices of the past three decades and safeguard Russia’s place in the world, he must destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. It is delusional to think that a man committed to criminality on such a grand scale could be swayed by talk of sanctions relief and minor territorial concessions.

Instead, the objective should be to increase the economic and military pressure on Putin until he begins to fear a new Russian collapse in the tradition of 1917 and 1991. This will require the kind of political courage from Ukraine’s partners that has been in short supply since 2022, but it is the only way to secure a sustainable peace in Europe. Putin dreams of taking his place in Russian history alongside Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Joseph Stalin, but he most definitely does not want to share the ignominious fate of Czar Nicholas II and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Nov 25, 2025

Russian imperial impunity is the key obstacle to a lasting peace in Ukraine

By Kristina Hook

From Peter the Great to Stalin and Putin, generations of Russian tyrants have systematically directed violence at Ukrainians in ways that must be addressed in order to secure a lasting peace, writes Kristina Hook.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Nov 25, 2025

Strengthening Ukraine’s wartime economy can set the stage for peace

By Zahar Hryniv

The US and Europe must take steps to strengthen Ukraine’s economic resilience if they wish to convince Putin that his dreams of outlasting the West are futile and persuade Russia to begin serious peace negotiations, writes Zahar Hryniv.

Conflict Economy & Business

UkraineAlert Nov 25, 2025

Trump’s latest Ukraine peace proposal sparks strong Republican reaction

By Doug Klain

Congress is clearly eager to help Trump force Russia to end its war in Ukraine. Capitalizing on the revised peace framework agreed by US and Ukrainian negotiators will now require action from both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, writes Doug Klain.

Conflict Financial Sanctions and Economic Coercion

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

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and support our work

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The post While Trump talks peace, Putin is escalating efforts to erase Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

]]> https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russian-imperial-impunity-is-the-key-obstacle-to-a-lasting-peace-in-ukraine/ Tue, 25 Nov 2025 22:04:18 +0000 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/?p=890790 From Peter the Great to Stalin and Putin, generations of Russian tyrants have systematically directed violence at Ukrainians in ways that must be addressed in order to secure a lasting peace, writes Kristina Hook.

The post Russian imperial impunity is the key obstacle to a lasting peace in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

]]> US President Donald Trump’s latest bid to broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine has sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent days, with officials from Washington, Kyiv, Moscow, and across Europe all seeking to shape the contours of a possible agreement. For now, discussion has centered on immediate matters, such as the wording of security guarantees. However, the far deeper historical roots that have long driven Russian violence against Ukraine also hold important policy implications for any peace process.

Given Moscow’s enduring ideological extremism toward Ukraine, renewed attempts at hidden and open warfare are likely. For this reason, the lasting success of Trump’s plan will depend not only on its terms, but on the strength and logistics of the enforcement measures that accompany it.

Moscow’s current aggression against Ukraine is neither new nor unprecedented. It is, in fact, the latest iteration of a centuries-long Russian campaign to Russify and erase the Ukrainian people. From Peter the Great to Stalin and Putin, generations of Russian tyrants have directed violence at Ukrainians in ways that are deliberate, systematic, and filled with an ideological fervor that must be confronted.

Every city the Russian military bombs, every child it kidnaps, every Ukrainian life it destroys today can only be understood within the long genealogy of Russia’s imperialistic state ideology. For centuries, this violent brand of expansionism has been directed at Ukraine.

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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.

The present full-scale invasion of Ukraine will soon pass the four-year mark, but the war did not begin in 2022. It was preceded by eight years of warfare in eastern Ukraine following Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea. This has been recognized by the European Court of Human Rights, which has ruled that Russia has been conducting sustained military operations in Ukraine since at least 2014. But even this is only the most recent chapter in a far older story.

During the eras of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the authorities consistently pursued policies aimed at dismantling Ukrainian identity. Tactics included banning the Ukrainian language, repressing cultural and religious leaders, and imprisoning advocates of Ukrainian independence.

Most devastatingly, Stalin and his regime engineered an artificial famine in the 1930s that killed at least four million Ukrainians in less than two years. Today, this deliberate mass starvation of Ukrainians is known as the Holodomor (“killing by hunger”). No outlier, the Holodomor was central to a broader Soviet campaign aimed at breaking Ukrainian resistance and other assertions of political autonomy. The lawyer who coined the term “genocide,” Raphael Lemkin, identified this attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation as the “classic example” of Soviet genocide.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

What unites these episodes is not only the violence itself but the ideology behind it. Moscow’s long history of crimes in Ukraine reflects an imperial worldview that treats human beings as resources to be harnessed for the state and as obstacles to be eliminated in the pursuit of total domination.

This ideology has evolved over time, but its core logic has remained remarkably consistent. Crucially, it has never faced sustained, meaningful repudiation by the international community. Because it was never confronted, Russia’s imperial ideology has been allowed to regenerate. A clear line of impunity links Stalin’s starvation of Ukrainian society in the 1930s to today’s Kremlin rhetoric insisting Ukraine is not a real nation at all.

This continuity is not abstract; it directly shapes present-day atrocities. When a state views humans as raw material for empire, the kidnapping and forced Russification of thousands of Ukrainian children becomes an acceptable instrument of policy rather than an aberration. This logic also applies to other aspects of the current invasion including filtration camps, torture chambers, rape and sexual violence, and mass deportations, along with the systematic destruction of Ukrainian cultural and religious life throughout every area under Russian control.

Ukraine’s top prosecutor notes that the number of open war crimes investigations has reached 178,391 documented cases. Indicating deliberate Kremlin policy, the former US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice recently stated that Russian atrocities in Ukraine are “systematic” and have been identified “literally everywhere that Russia’s troops have been deployed.”

The current actions of Putin’s occupation forces in Ukraine are the same state practices that have long defined Russian imperial rule: Absorb what can be absorbed, erase what cannot, and turn the conquered into fuel for the next stage of expansion.

Russia’s genocidal intent is not limited to eliminating Ukrainian identity. Putin’s extreme ideology drives him to pursue the incorporation of Ukrainians into Russia’s war machine against the West. The danger is not only the destruction of Ukraine as a nation, but the possibility that Russia will assimilate as much of Ukraine’s territory, cutting-edge technology, and population as it can before continuing further.

Contemporary Russian rhetoric makes this explicit. Strikingly, the Putin era has witnessed the resurgence of the slogan “We can do it again.” Originally graffiti scrawled on the Reichstag by Red Army soldiers in 1945, the popularity of this phrase surged after Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea to become a menacing mantra of modern Russian nationalism that signals a society intent on conquest and domination.

The atrocities we are witnessing today in Ukraine reflect centuries of Russian impunity. Impunity not only allows perpetrators to continue; it invites them to escalate. Russia’s imperial ideology has never been confronted with the kind of accountability needed to dismantle it. As long as this ideology persists unchallenged, the threat will not stop at Ukraine’s borders.

The international community now finds itself confronted with the consequences of a genocidal worldview that has been left intact for generations. The urgent question is not only how to halt Russia’s genocidal actions against Ukrainians today, but how to ensure that the world finally repudiates the extremist ideology that made this war possible. Without that repudiation, millions of Russians will remain convinced that they can, in fact, “do it again.”

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Nov 18, 2025

Vladimir Putin fears entering Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Throughout his reign, Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin has become increasingly obsessed with the idea of erasing Ukrainian independence, but his decision to invade has backfired disastrously, eroding centuries of Russian influence and accelerating Ukraine’s European integration, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert Oct 23, 2025

Russia’s ‘human safari’ in southern Ukraine is a warning to the world

By Oleksandr Tolokonnikov

Russia’s escalating campaign of drone attacks on the civilian population of Ukraine’s Kherson region highlights the destructive power of modern drone technologies, writes Oleksandr Tolokonnikov.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert Nov 17, 2025

Zelenskyy faces the biggest corruption scandal of his presidency

By Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti

Amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, Ukraine in now facing the largest corruption scandal of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s presidency over alleged kickbacks in the graft-prone energy sector, writes Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti.

Civil Society Conflict

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.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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.

Learn more

Follow us on social media
and support our work

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The post Russian imperial impunity is the key obstacle to a lasting peace in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

]]> https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/africasource/el-fasher-is-only-the-latest-wake-up-call-to-the-genocide-unfolding-in-sudan/ Tue, 25 Nov 2025 18:46:14 +0000 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/?p=890375 Sudan’s civil war has become one of the world’s deadliest crises—and the massacre in El Fasher exposes a genocide unfolding in plain sight. As regional powers fuel the war, millions face famine, displacement, and systematic violence.

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]]> Last week, US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Sudan “has become the most violent place on Earth” and that he and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had talked about the United States using its influence to “bring an immediate halt to what is taking place in Sudan.”

Such a statement comes after unproductive attempts by Washington to mediate the conflict. It also isn’t clear how the president would bring a halt to the situation, since both sides in the fighting are supported by US partners. But Trump is waking up to the reality of what is happening in Sudan—and he’s not the only one.

On October 27 this year, two and a half years into the Sudanese civil war, the international community seemed to finally grasp that a genocide was unfolding in front of its eyes. After enduring an eighteen-month blockade marked by relentless drone strikes, the city of El Fasher, the final major urban center in Sudan’s North Darfur state outside the grip of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), was overrun. The RSF is the paramilitary faction that has been at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023.

Once the group pushed into El Fasher, reports and footage circulating across social media and television revealed widespread killings of civilians. Around 1,500 people were killed and some ninety thousand displaced, with another fifty thousand fleeing violence in the neighboring North and South Kordofan provinces, according to the Sudan Doctors Network and the United Nations.

El Fasher had long been one of the most violent fronts in the devastating conflict between Sudan’s national army and the RSF. In April, the paramilitary group had intensified its offensive on the city, shortly after being driven out of the capital, Khartoum.

The world’s most serious humanitarian crisis

For years, the genocide unfolding in Sudan barely registered on the world’s radar. The international community remained more focused on crises in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine. But the fighting and killing in Sudan never stopped.

In a country in tatters, where there is no systematic record of the dead, casualty estimates vary. Some sources suggest that the number hovers somewhere around 150,000. However, human rights organizations believe that the real toll of the civil war is likely much higher. The conflict has displaced about fourteen million people out of a population of fifty-one million. Half of them are refugees in neighboring countries. As of April 2025, twenty-five million Sudanese were facing acute famine—and according to Doctors Without Borders, over 70 percent of children under the age of five were acutely malnourished. Among those who fled El Fasher, 35 percent suffered from “severe acute malnutrition.”

With severe damage to its hospitals and water supply, Sudan now faces one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises—one that some experts say even eclipses the emergencies in Gaza and Ukraine. Still, El Fasher is not the first, but merely the latest genocidal campaign in the country.

Naming the genocide

Engaging in war crimes and crimes against humanity, RSF soldiers have carried out child abductions, mass rape, sexual slavery, and village burnings for years, mostly in Darfur in western Sudan. Even as far back as 2001, the predecessor of the RSF—a militia known as the Janjaweed—repeatedly looted homes and engaged in gang rape in the region. Between 2003 and 2008, the group killed hundreds of thousands of non-Arab civilians. The campaign displaced around three million people and was described as a “genocide” by US President Joe Biden just before leaving the White House and as a “ethnic cleansing” by international observers. Against this background, Darfur is not a newly emerging hotspot. Home to several long-persecuted non-Arab tribes—Fur, Masalit, Berti, and Zaghawa—it is, in fact, again becoming one.  

The Zaghawa, who are the majority group in El Fasher, rallied to the army in late 2023 after the RSF committed massacres against the Masalit and other non-Arab communities in the city of El Geneina in West Darfur. In a report released in May 2024, Human Rights Watch documented these killings as ethnic cleansing. The report cited the testimony of a seventeen-year-old boy who described the murder of twelve children and five adults from several families: “Two members of the RSF… tore the children from their parents and, as the parents began to scream, two other members of the RSF shot and killed the parents. Then they piled the children up and shot them. They threw their bodies into the river, along with their belongings.”

African apathy—and cynical regional powers

With its paltry communiqués, a powerless African Union has, for two years, contented itself with calling for an end to the fighting or expressing its concern about the humanitarian crisis, without ever sending a single African head of state to the front lines in Khartoum or to visit the victims of the El Geneina massacre.

In a press release marking two years of conflict, Amnesty International noted that “the world has only contributed 6.6% of the funds needed to address the humanitarian catastrophe raging in the country.” Observers usually recommend enforcement of the arms embargo, increased emergency humanitarian aid, and justice for the victims. However, there is one issue on which the United Nations Security Council and the mediators remain discreetly, if not embarrassingly, silent: the armed support that the belligerents receive from regional powers.

Egypt, Iran, Turkey, China, the UAE, and even Russia and Ukraine have all turned their attention to Sudan, siding either with the SAF or the RSF. Drones, gold, military intelligence, and mercenaries are all being used to intensify the violence of the war, while the meddling regional powers deny any involvement. Motivations for their involvement include securing the Nile’s waters, controlling the eight hundred kilometers of Sudanese Red Sea coastline, and the mineral resources of eastern Sudan. Sudan has also accused Chad and Kenya of being parties to the conflict. At the London Sudan Conference on April 15, the second anniversary of the outbreak of the civil war, Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Youssef reiterated these allegations.

Clearly, the complex web of geostrategic interests in the region makes any mediation difficult, with Sudan even considering taking action against the UAE before the International Court of Justice for supplying the RSF with weapons.

The people as a solution

As it stands, Sudan is trapped in a dangerous regional power play and is threatened with partition. Should the country fall apart, this would not only destabilize the African continent but also endanger the exceptional Sudanese cultural heritage.

Any solution in Sudan must run through its civil society and, ultimately, its people. They are strong in part because of—and shown by—their history. With eight borders and a geostrategic position between the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, Sudan is a crossroads of African cultures, religions, and civilizations. The country still bears a name that means “land of the Blacks,” despite the attempts to erase its African roots carried out by the Islamist regime of long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir. Sudan, which rivaled ancient Egypt, eventually conquered and ruled the Egyptian throne, becoming the twenty-fifth dynasty of pharaohs. All this happened a long time ago, under Black African leadership, before Christians and Muslim Arabs expanded their influence in the country.  

This history and legacy help explain the political resilience of the Sudanese people and the dynamism of Sudan’s civil society. Bashir’s ousting in 2019 would not have been possible without democratic resistance, embodied by civic organizations such as the Sudanese Professionals Association, the nonviolent Forces of Freedom and Change coalition, and the grassroots Girifna movement.

Today, as in the past, the Sudanese people—rather than an apathetic international community or meddling regional powers—could once again be the decisive force for change. Empowering civil society and grassroots organizations should therefore be the starting point for any diplomatic initiative.

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Rama Yade is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

The Africa Center works to promote dynamic geopolitical partnerships with African states and to redirect US and European policy priorities toward strengthening security and bolstering economic growth and prosperity on the continent.

Learn more

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]]> https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/memo-to/the-secretary-of-state-in-the-upcoming-honduran-elections-democracy-and-us-interests-are-at-stake/ Mon, 24 Nov 2025 21:17:48 +0000 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/?p=889734 The upcoming general election in Honduras demands international attention—both because of the potential instability it could trigger and its implications for US economic interests.

The post Memo to the Secretary of State: In the upcoming Honduran elections, democracy and US interests are at stake appeared first on Atlantic Council.

]]>

TO: Secretary of State Marco Rubio
FROM: María Fernanda Bozmoski, Isabella Palacios, and Jason Marczak
SUBJECT: In the upcoming Honduras election, the US must defend democracy and its economic interests
DATE: November 24, 2025