Since independence, Ukrainians have been evenly split between those who desire to be part of the Euro-Atlantic (European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization) community and those who gravitate toward Eurasia (Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States). During the 1990s, when the European Union and NATO were focused on Central Europe and Russia was politically down and economically weak, Ukraine was able to have it both ways. Since the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has made significant progress developing a Euro-Atlantic style democratic political system, demonstrated a vibrant open media and civil society, and successfully advanced civilian oversight of its military. Despite this progress, Ukrainian opinion remains sharply divided on integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions. Attempts by Ukrainian leaders and some current members of NATO to promote a Membership Action Plan have backfired. Not only has Russia, now more autocratic, responded with missile threats, cutting gas supplies, and meddling in Ukraine's domestic politics, but the crosscutting internal and external pressures are aggravating profound political instability, actually making Ukraine a less appealing candidate for membership in either the European Union or NATO. Under these circumstances, the challenge is to provide Ukraine sufficient time to consolidate successful democratic governance and develop domestic consensus on this critical strategic choice. Rather than pressing Ukraine toward early accession, the new U.S. administration should keep open the possibility of NATO membership, but for the time being encourage Ukraine to follow the model of Finland, another nonaligned Partner for Peace, as it attempts to reconcile the competing popular factions in the country and to navigate between its Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian neighbors. By nurturing its political stability, the United States will enhance Ukraine's value to the Alliance over the longer term.

Since independence, Ukrainians have been evenly split between those who desire to be part of the Euro-Atlantic (European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization) community and those who gravitate toward Eurasia (Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States). During the 1990s, when the European Union and NATO were focused on Central Europe and Russia was politically down and economically weak, Ukraine was able to have it both ways. Since the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has made significant progress developing a Euro-Atlantic style democratic political system, demonstrated a vibrant open media and civil society, and successfully advanced civilian oversight of its military. Despite this progress, Ukrainian opinion remains sharply divided on integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions. Attempts by Ukrainian leaders and some current members of NATO to promote a Membership Action Plan have backfired. Not only has Russia, now more autocratic, responded with missile threats, cutting gas supplies, and meddling in Ukraine's domestic politics, but the crosscutting internal and external pressures are aggravating profound political instability, actually making Ukraine a less appealing candidate for membership in either the European Union or NATO. Under these circumstances, the challenge is to provide Ukraine sufficient time to consolidate successful democratic governance and develop domestic consensus on this critical strategic choice. Rather than pressing Ukraine toward early accession, the new U.S. administration should keep open the possibility of NATO membership, but for the time being encourage Ukraine to follow the model of Finland, another nonaligned Partner for Peace, as it attempts to reconcile the competing popular factions in the country and to navigate between its Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian neighbors. By nurturing its political stability, the United States will enhance Ukraine's value to the Alliance over the longer term.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, former Soviet republic Ukraine has struggled against its “giant neighbor to the north”—Russia— to maintain its sovereignty. In early 2014 tensions turned to conflict as Vladimir Putin, determined to keep Ukraine from forging stronger ties with the West, seized Crimea and fomented conflict in eastern Ukraine. In the latest Brookings essay, Chrystia Freeland, a former Ukrainian-based reporter with strong family ties to the country, offers a personal reflection on the conflict and the sentiment of the Ukrainian people. She highlights the fact that despite historic, cultural, and linguistic ties between the two countries, Ukrainians stand defiant in their desire for independence.

An insider’s account of the complex relations between the United States and post-Soviet Ukraine The Eagle and the Trident provides the first comprehensive account of the development of U.S. diplomatic relations with an independent Ukraine, covering the years 1992 through 2004 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The United States devoted greater attention to Ukraine than any other post-Soviet state (except Russia) after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Steven Pifer, a career Foreign Service officer, worked on U.S.-Ukraine relations at the State Department and the White House during that period and also served as ambassador to Ukraine. With this volume he has written the definitive narrative of the ups and downs in the relationship between Washington and newly independent Ukraine. The relationship between the two countries moved from heady days in the mid- 1990s, when they declared a strategic partnership, to troubled times after 2002. During the period covered by the book, the United States generally succeeded in its major goals in Ukraine, notably the safe transfer of nearly 2,000 strategic nuclear weapons left there after the Soviet collapse. Washington also provided robust support for Ukraine’s effort to develop into a modern, democratic, market-oriented state. But these efforts aimed at reforming the state proved only modestly successful, leaving a nation that was not resilient enough to stand up to Russian aggression in Crimea in 2014. The author reflects on what worked and what did not work in the various U.S. approaches toward Ukraine. He also offers a practitioner’s recommendations for current U.S. policies in the context of ongoing uncertainty about the political stability of Ukraine and Russia’s long-term intentions toward its smaller but important neighbor.

The remarkable popular protest in Kiev and across Ukraine following the cooked presidential election of November 2004 has transformed the politics of eastern Europe. Andrew Wilson witnessed the events firsthand and here looks behind the headlines to ascertain what really happened and how it will affect the future of the region. It is a dramatic story: an outgoing president implicated via secret tape-recordings in corruption and murder; a shadowy world of political cheats and manipulators; the massive covert involvement of Putin’s Russia; the poisoning of the opposition challenger; and finally the mass protest of half a million Ukrainians that forced a second poll and the victory of Viktor Yushchenko. As well as giving an account of the election and its aftermath, the book examines the broader implications of the Orange Revolution and of Russia’s serious miscalculation of its level of influence. It explores the likely chain reaction in Moldova, Belarus, and the nervous autocracies of the Caucasus, and points to a historical transformation of the geopolitics of Eurasia.

From one of the finest journalists of our time comes a definitive, boots-on-the-ground dispatch from the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine. “Essential for anyone who wants to understand events in Ukraine and what they portend for the West.”—The Wall Street Journal Ever since Ukraine’s violent 2014 revolution, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the country has been at war. Misinformation reigns, more than two million people have been displaced, and Ukrainians fight one another on a second front—the crucial war against corruption. With In Wartime, Tim Judah lays bare the events that have turned neighbors against one another and mired Europe’s second-largest country in a conflict seemingly without end. In Lviv, Ukraine’s western cultural capital, mothers tend the graves of sons killed on the other side of the country. On the Maidan, the square where the protests that deposed President Yanukovych began, pamphleteers, recruiters, buskers, and mascots compete for attention. In Donetsk, civilians who cheered Russia’s President Vladimir Putin find their hopes crushed as they realize they have been trapped in the twilight zone of a frozen conflict. Judah talks to everyone from politicians to poets, pensioners, and historians. Listening to their clashing explanations, he interweaves their stories to create a sweeping, tragic portrait of a country fighting a war of independence from Russia—twenty-five years after the collapse of the USSR.