Join us online on May 23rd, 2025, for a special presentation based on the upcoming PONARS ebook, Political Dynamics in Ukraine. This event will feature contributions from the some of the authors of this comprehensive collection, which explores the political, military, and social challenges Ukraine has faced since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The discussion will cover a wide range of topics, including Ukraine’s democratic resilience, the conceptual military and strategic features of the war, the impact of Ukraine's oligarchs, and Russia’s propaganda in the occupied territories.

Speakers

Oleksandra Keudel is an Associate Professor at the Kyiv School of Economics and an Associate at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. She researches democratic transformation and societal resilience, with a focus on Ukraine’s local governance and sub-national politics. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin and has been a visiting researcher at George Washington University, NYU, and Södertörn University. She is the author of How Patronal Networks Shape Opportunities for Local Citizen Participation in a Hybrid Regime (ibidem/Columbia University Press, 2022), and her related paper received the 2021 Best Paper Award at the ASN Annual Convention. In this talk, she will examine collaborative crisis governance and societal resilience in a decentralized state, drawing on lessons from Ukrainian local authorities during Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Yuriy Matsiyevsky is a political scientist and professor at the National University of Ostroh Academy, specializing in regime dynamics, political stability, and democratic transitions in post-Soviet states. His research notably compares Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Euromaidan protests, analyzing factors that led to regime collapse and resilience. Matsiyevsky has published widely on Ukrainian politics and contributes to academic discourse through platforms like ResearchGate. He was a Petrarch Fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at George Washington University. In this talk, he will address the war’s impact on Ukrainian oligarchs.

Andrey Makarychev is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and Associate Senior Researcher at CIDOB (Barcelona). His research focuses on Russia–EU relations, post-Soviet space, mega-events in Eastern Europe, and biopolitics. He has held academic positions at George Mason University, ETH Zurich, and the Danish Institute of International Studies. He co-edited Changing Political and Economic Regimes in Russia (Routledge, 2013) and has published in journals such as Global Governance, Europe-Asia Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Demokratizatsiya, and Cooperation and Conflict, as well as in edited volumes by Ashgate, Palgrave Macmillan, and Nomos. In this talk, he will discuss Russia's biopolitical propaganda in the occupied territories.

Chair

Mikhail Alexseev is Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University, where he has taught since 2000 and served as the Bruce E. Porteous Chair. His research focuses on threat assessment in interstate and internal wars, ethnic relations, nationalism, and immigration in Russia/Eurasia, with his current work concentrated on Ukraine’s democratic resilience in the face of Russia’s military invasions since 2014. He is a key editor and contributor to the PONARS ebook Political Dynamics in Ukraine, writing a chapter on the Overview of Key Topics and Their Relevance to Ukraine and U.S. Interests, and co-authoring another chapter on The Gradual Reemergence of Democratic Politics in Ukraine.