2026-06-19 04:59:24
The story of Svitlana and her husband, Petro, both in their 50s, who spent almost a year in an occupied small town in Kherson Oblast, offers insight into the experience of suddenly falling under Russian control.
The couple worked at a railway station and, like many Ukrainians, Svitlana now looks back on life before the invasion with a new appreciation.
“We had everything: work, our own houses, kitchen gardens,” she said. “We could visit our children freely, vacation abroad, and buy anything we wanted.”
Their town is near the Chonhar Strait, which separates Crimea from mainland Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, Russian forces crossed it and occupied the town. “It was an unending stream of trucks, tanks, howitzers, and other military equipment,” Svitlana said.
Many neighbors fled immediately, joining more than nine million Ukrainians displaced since the invasion. Svitlana and Petro stayed because they were carers for Petro’s parents; his mother had terminal cancer, and his father was disabled after a stroke.
In March 2022, residents organized a pro-Ukrainian rally to show the invaders they didn`t need “liberation.” It ended when marchers encountered Russian military vehicles and turned back.
Soon, occupation became a daily reality. Stores emptied, and people stood in long lines for bread and other essentials. Electronic payments stopped working, and cash was scarce. At ATMs, there were “300 or more people waiting: old men and women, wrapped up in shawls,” Svitlana said. “You’re standing there not knowing if there would be enough cash when your turn came.”
Medicine began to disappear, internet access was disrupted, and mobile phone services became unreliable. One spot near a store had a signal, attracting both locals and Russian soldiers. “It was like a water hole in a desert where prey and predators drink next to each other,” she said.
As fighting raged nearby, the family mostly sheltered in the basement. From the attic, Svitlana occasionally watched military aircraft flying over. “I watched and couldn`t comprehend it,” she said. “How was it possible in our time for them just to come and kill us?”
For months, Russia appeared dominant. Then, on July 11, 2022, Ukrainian forces struck a major ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka with US-supplied HIMARS rockets. “We ran outside and saw our neighbors applauding and cheering. Then, another volley, and a huge explosion,” Svitlana recalled.
Svitlana continued working for Ukrainian Railways until July. When operations ceased, she felt complete isolation. “No connection. No medicine. No food. No hospital. No free movement. No work. No wages,” she said.
Soon afterward, Russian security officers searched the family`s house, confiscated office equipment, and tried to persuade Svitlana to continue working under occupation, offering double pay. She refused.
The Russian authorities struggled with labor shortages. Many residents had fled, while others refused to collaborate. Salary increases and other incentives were offered, but disappeared after a few months.
Such measures were intended to create the illusion of a better life under occupation and keep people long enough to make it more difficult for them to leave, according to research by the Ukrainian Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
Businesses closed. Equipment was stolen. “Everything they could remove, they did,” she said.
The couple stopped driving their car, fearing confiscation, and relied on bicycles. Petro avoided the bus because he feared forced mobilization. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, approximately 50,000 men from the occupied territories have been conscripted, and public spaces are increasingly dominated by women.
At first, residents helped one another — furnishing a communal bomb shelter in the railway facilities, helping find medicine, and even donating yeast from their kitchens to a local bakery which had run out. But the social fabric soon began to unravel, and Svitlana said she learned to remain silent.
She was especially disappointed by neighbors who welcomed the occupation. Some of them, she said, were Russian citizens who had retired to Ukraine.
“They came here, built houses, and told us what a beautiful, heavenly climate we had and how cheap everything was,” she recalled. “But it wasn`t good enough. They wanted Russia to come.”
By late summer, many families left so their children could start attending schools elsewhere. Those who remained faced a fully Russified education system.
Svitlana learned her neighbor had enrolled her grandson in a school run by the occupation authorities. When she confronted her, the woman replied that he wanted to study and learn math. “Do you understand that they will teach him to kill you?” Svitlana responded. “They will teach him that Ukrainians are evil?”
By the fall of 2022, the family had adapted to a restricted existence. Their only escape was visiting trusted relatives, until the imposition of the 7 pm curfew made that impossible. Russian goods gradually replaced Ukrainian products, prices rose, while quality fell, Svitlana said.
Many neighbors were detained, beaten, or disappeared. Men were held without charges, tortured, and released with “their ribs broken and faces bloodied,” she said.
After Kherson’s liberation, investigators discovered multiple torture sites, including facilities where abuse of children was reported. By March this year, Ukrainian prosecutors had opened 213,200 investigations into Russian war crimes.
In the early stages of the full-scale invasion, calls by Ukrainian authorities for residents to leave angered many, including Svitlana. But her view of evacuation has changed.
“People had lived there their whole lives, built dynasties. And now they were supposed to throw it all away? And live where? Be homeless?” she asked, before adding that she had eventually come to understand. “All that is needed is for everyone to be alive and healthy,” she said.
Her frail mother-in-law struggled to make sense of what was happening. At first, she reassured her family that everything would be fine because Russians were “our brothers,” and they had lived together in the Soviet Union.
But the news about atrocities committed by Russian forces during their occupation of Bucha shattered the old lady’s faith in Russia. In December 2022, only days apart, both of Petro`s parents died.
The couple left the morning after the wake, embarking on a five-day journey through Crimea, Russia, Latvia, and Belarus before reaching Sumy, where their daughter was waiting for them.
In Crimea, Svitlana recalled seeing “burned fields, overturned and charred cars, debris everywhere, and a huge billboard of the Virgin Mary bearing the words: ‘Russia is a stronghold of peace and prosperity.’”
At one checkpoint, Petro was interrogated for four hours. He was ordered to strip to the waist while officials inspected his tattoos. When he said they were going to Europe, one of the interrogators told him, “There are only gay people there. What are you going to do there?”
Svitlana and Petro were fortunate, as leaving the occupied territories can be as dangerous as remaining in them. Cases of abuse, forced disappearances, and the separation of children from their parents are well documented.
Svitlana now celebrates her life in Kyiv, where she and Petro are back working on the railway and helping their daughter with her baby. “The smile doesn’t leave your face, because you can talk freely, loudly, with anyone you want,” she said.
Their old home has since been destroyed. The town they once knew has been devastated by war, occupation, and the bombing of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.
“Everything has been looted, everything has been stolen,” she said. “There is nothing.”
(Names have been changed for security reasons)
Tatiana Vorozhko is The Reckoning Project Contributing Editor
Dinara Khalilova is The Reckoning Project Contributing Journalist
Since 2022, The Reckoning Project has investigated war crimes in Russian-occupied Ukraine and taken evidence from more than 800 survivors.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-06-19 01:47:40
“In the village of Urzuf, the first tourists have opened the swimming season,” reports a Russian TV reporter from the Azov Sea coast in occupied Donetsk. “There is even a new ride called the Pendulum, and today we are the first to test it. It was recently brought from China, installed by Chinese specialists.”
Moscow is very keen for the world to see its occupation of parts of Ukraine as settled and normalized, and the presence of foreign companies is one of the ways it hopes to do so. But there is a world of difference between Chinese companies selling equipment to Russians in Ukraine and long-term investment.
Karansky Quarry, near the settlement of Myrne, also in occupied Donetsk, had been inactive for 14 years before the full-scale invasion, but in 2022, people linked to Beijing arrived to relaunch operations, according to an investigation by Realna Gazeta.
By May 2023, the quarry employed 243 workers and was producing approximately 250 tons of commercial fractional crushed stone per day.
Amma Construction Machinery Co., Ltd. and Zhongxin Heavy Industry Machinery Co., Ltd., both registered in China’s Henan province, supplied equipment and industrial support to reboot the facility. A concrete production plant and a crushing facility were constructed in 2024 as part of a joint project with Chinese companies at the site, Realna Gazeta said.
A report by the Eastern Human Rights Group, together with the Institute for Strategic Studies and Security, identified at least 17 Chinese companies linked to the occupied territories, ranging from early-stage discussions to supplying equipment for mining and infrastructure projects.
Mining appears to be the leading edge of Chinese commercial engagement. In 2023, representatives from Nedra group, a mineral company based in occupied Donetsk, toured mining equipment manufacturers across China before reportedly taking delivery of industrial machinery from Henan Liming Heavy Industry Science & Technology.
The next year, engineering giant WISDRI was approached over the modernization of metallurgical plants in occupied Donetsk as Moscow continued to court Chinese firms.
It is unclear how much influence China has from selling equipment for use in the occupied territories, or if it plans long-term operations there. Some are skeptical and see the Kremlin’s disinformation machine at work as it seeks to use arms sales and short-term business relationships to build on the validation given to Putin by his visits with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Every Ukrainian drone contains 50 to 70% Chinese components, does that mean China supports Ukraine?” asked Kostyantyn Batozsky, founder of Ukraine’s Azov Development Agency. “China sells equipment to Russia openly, but it also sells to Ukraine. It sells to everyone.”
Batozsky warned of other, longer-term risks, noting that China is interested in a Russian victory in Ukraine because it would weaken the West. China’s strategic interests in the region are tied to logistics and trade routes connected to the Belt and Road Initiative, he said.
“The only thing that really interests Beijing is ports and transport corridors, though the Azov ports are shallow and not very suitable for them,” he said. “But China will never officially operate in territories that are dangerous and whose legal status is uncertain.”
He warned that the appearance of Chinese workers on Russian TV may be “provocations” by the Kremlin, and Ukraine and its allies should be careful not to fall for its tricks. Russia uses claims of Chinese involvement to legitimize its occupation and strengthen its negotiating position, he said.
“They also want to show the Americans, especially during the current negotiations, that ‘look, the Chinese are already coming in. They are entering the region. You could have been here instead.’ That is the dangerous part,” he said. “The Russians would be delighted if we started publicly debunking all of this, because that would shift the conversation to a different level – one where we implicitly acknowledge their de facto control over these territories.”
Compared to the Donetsk region, Chinese interest in occupied Luhansk appears much more cautious. The occupation authorities have attempted to attract Chinese investors since 2024, but nothing has come of it.
“Chinese investors have been brought there, but so far we do not see any major Chinese project actually launched,” said Ukrainian journalist Andrii Dikhtiarenko, one of the co-authors of the Realna Gazeta investigation.
There’s a similar pattern in occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where cooperation remains largely declarative. The Russian-appointed governor of occupied Zaporizhzhia claimed in December 2025 that he was working with the UAE, China, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan, while his counterpart in Kherson wrote that his region had used an economic forum in Crimea to strengthen cooperation with China.
Sources in Kherson say there is no firm evidence of any Chinese business activity.
What is more certain is that around 6,000 mobile base stations have been deployed across occupied southern and eastern Ukraine using Chinese equipment, and telecommunications networks in the occupied south rely on Huawei servers. This has created a closed digital environment integrated with Chinese surveillance technologies, the Eastern Human Rights Group said.
There is also evidence of “yuanization,” and some 79 bank branches in the occupied territories are officially selling the Chinese currency, the group said. It is now the second most used currency, and businesses are employing covert methods, such as Alipay and WeChat apps, to circumvent international compliance.
Even though China has not officially recognized the illegal annexation of Crimea, Moscow’s puppet “republics” in eastern Ukraine, or the occupation of parts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, it has gradually infiltrated the information and cultural space of the territories.
Chinese bloggers and journalists have gained access to occupied areas and produced content for Chinese audiences that echoes Russian narratives. During the fight for Mariupol, for example, Phoenix TV correspondent Lu Yuguang reported alongside Russian forces, broadcasting their version of events to millions of viewers.
Russia also uses Chinese bloggers and performers for its propaganda. The Chinese singer Wang Fang performed “Katyusha,” a Soviet-Era song, at the ruins of the theater in Mariupol, where Russian forces killed more than 600 sheltering civilians in the early months of the full-scale war.
Chinese language centers and private schools are also opening in occupied regions, including a language study center at a university in occupied Luhansk with dedicated facilities and teaching staff, indicating it is intended to be more than a temporary initiative.
Yurii Poita, head of the Asia-Pacific section at Ukraine’s Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, says Kyiv has a range of channels to communicate with Beijing, including diplomatic, business, and intelligence connections, and should use them to respond.
“Chinese involvement strengthens Russia’s position in the occupied territories, helps sustain economic activity, supports industrial development, facilitates the exploitation of natural resources, and contributes to infrastructure that can also serve military purposes,” he said.
“Ukraine should present evidence of such activities and press China to reduce or end its involvement.”
Elina Beketova is a Non-resident Fellow with the Democratic Resilience program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). She is the author of Behind the Lines, a database and article series focused on Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-06-18 04:19:40
The 2022 US CHIPS Act earmarked $52.8 billion, most for grants and subsidies to build giant semiconductor plants capable of producing AI chips. Europe’s 2023 Chips Act 1.0 mobilized about €11 billion in public funding, and the newly proposed Chips Act 2.0 shifts the focus toward building advanced foundries.
In contrast, the UK’s new AI Hardware Plan will unleash a mere pittance of public money — £1.1 billion. But the funds look well targeted, focusing on British strengths in chip design and research and on testing novel chips. The UK will support AI‑specific compute, AI‑relevant chips, and an AI talent pipeline, rather than a generic “chips for everything” agenda.
Design and research represent the UK’s comparative advantage. Arm-designed chips power almost all the world’s mobile phones. The plan will fund the design and testing of new chips to fit with the UK’s existing strengths: Arm‑style intellectual property, system‑on‑chip design, and cutting‑edge research in AI hardware and algorithms. In practical terms, every pound spent will go much further than vainly chasing a leading‑edge fab: it creates portable IP, exports, and high‑value jobs without locking the country into a single site or process node.
The contrast with previous UK chip strategies is striking. An earlier ten‑year semiconductor plan set out just £1 billion over a decade. But it recycled existing funds and lacked a convincing mechanism to translate research excellence into commercial success.
Unlike the European proposal to build a sovereign 1‑nanometer fab, the UK avoids promising to build a leading‑edge manufacturing champion, nor does it dangle tens of billions in subsidies to create a local copy of TSMC, Samsung, or Intel. The three companies dominate the global leading‑edge foundry market; launching a new entrant into that club from scratch would be an extraordinarily expensive and risky gamble, especially for a mid‑sized economy.
An interesting element of the British plan is a government commitment to buy chips and systems from “innovative start‑ups and British firms,” rather than limiting support to grants and R&D checks. By making “strategic purchases” of AI chips from UK‑based firms to keep them in the country, domestic companies receive guaranteed demand and a credible anchor customer.
That matters. Infant AI‑hardware companies often fail not for lack of technology, but for lack of customers willing to take the first risk. The UK government signaling that it will be a repeat buyer represents a powerful complement to venture capital and export markets.
The strategy also marks a cultural shift in how the UK thinks about ownership and control of strategic tech assets. When Japan’s SoftBank bought Arm in 2016, London let the purchase of a strategic tech champion breeze through, promoting “Britain is open for business.” If the new thinking were applied, it should have treated the sale as a national security concern.
Current Business Secretary Peter Kyle says he would have vetoed the sale of Arm had he been in government at the time, and has signaled a high “risk threshold” for allowing foreign takeovers of critical tech. The government now talks about increasing taxpayer investments in promising firms — an attempt to ensure that value created in the UK is not immediately sold offshore.
If the UK can anchor a cluster of AI hardware firms at home and retain more of their ownership, it becomes a reliable partner in a cutting-edge Western semiconductor supply chain — one that contributes valuable IP and products rather than simply buying chips designed and owned elsewhere. It would bolster a potential broad democratic alliance seeking to stay ahead of China.
Real risks remain. The UK’s £1.1 billion, while significant, remains modest compared to US and Chinese industrial programs; poorly targeted, it could vanish into a few failed bets. How procurement and “strategic purchases” are conducted will be crucial: if government buying is slow, bureaucratic, or steered towards politically connected firms rather than the best technology, it will do little to help genuine innovators.
Even if successful, the UK will continue to depend on foreign foundries — TSMC, Samsung, Intel — which means it must stay deeply engaged in alliances and export control regimes to ensure access to leading‑edge processes.
Yet, this strategy is the right model for a mid‑sized democracy, as opposed to the mega-fab dreams now circulating elsewhere in Europe. It puts real money behind AI‑specific hardware, uses the state as a customer to anchor new firms, focuses on design and innovation where the UK is strongest, and starts to treat ownership and control of critical tech as a strategic question rather than an afterthought.
It’s not a guarantee of success — but it improves the chances of building an AI hardware base that is innovative, resilient, and remains ahead of China’s innovation.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
A Roadmap for Europe-US Tech Cooperation
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2026-06-18 03:22:08
America’s new AI policy aims to restrict who has access to frontier models. It’s a tough challenge.
Since taking office, President Trump’s administration has slashed regulatory obstacles to promote the American AI stack in the name of innovation. It rolled back the Biden-era AI Diffusion Rule, which created a global licensing regime for access to advanced semiconductors; its AI Action Plan aimed to remove “onerous regulation”; and it moved to block state-level AI safety laws. The overall goal was to make US tech indispensable.
“The AI industry is a beautiful baby,” the President explained. “We have to grow that baby and let that baby thrive. And you don’t want rules to get in the way of a beautiful baby when it’s taking its first steps. You just want it to take its first steps, essentially, and let it start to run.”
But as AI models have grown potentially more dangerous, the administration has shifted gears, citing national security and real concerns about the model’s own security. The policy moves far beyond Biden-era tools to control how frontier models are accessed and by whom.
An executive order, dubbed Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security, represented a first, baby step. Although it appears to validate concerns over AI safety, the administration abandoned early ideas of mandatory government checks in favor of a voluntary framework under which AI labs would give authorities access to frontier models 30 days before their release.
The real reversal came with export controls. Within ten days of the voluntary executive order, the Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to cut off all access to its latest Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models for non-US citizens. Amazon reportedly raised concerns about cybersecurity risks. Anthropic disagrees.
In any case, the order is unworkable. Anthropic could only comply by firing its own foreign employees. Software, by its nature of bytes and bits, easily crosses physical borders. In response to the administration move, Anthropic suspended access for everyone, including US citizens.
Allies are spooked. European leaders, already worried about their dependency on US tech, had just announced a tech sovereignty plan designed to limit their reliance on US cloud, chips, and AI models. The ban on Mythos and Fable access reinforced fears that the US government would wield a “kill switch” to limit access to cutting-edge AI.
The Anthropic case “further underlines Europe’s need for technological sovereignty,” European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said. In a volatile European Parliament debate, even the most pro-tech voices called the ban on the Anthropic models a wake-up call.
“Europe cannot keep building its tech stack on access that can be switched off overnight by a foreign government,” said Aura Salla, a former Meta executive turned European parliamentarian. “We must take action to reserve our data and our market preliminarily for European tech to scale it and build our own frontier AI.”
From the US perspective, this crackdown has a logic. It reflects a growing recognition that semiconductor export controls have underdelivered. China has found other ways to access compute and train capable AI models. Allies who are central to the regime have proved difficult. US lawmakers recently introduced a bill to extend US export restrictions on Dutch and Japanese lithography machines, angering allied governments who are “wary of new export controls as a US legislative mandate rather than a negotiated arrangement,” according to Emily Benson and Lexi Linafelter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Anthropic case underlines an expansion of export controls to target software models, not just hardware. It is problematic. What threshold should count as a national security risk? A complete cutoff to foreigners is difficult to enforce in practice. Restrictions can also be circumvented, as China has shown by reportedly accessing Mythos.
Allied cooperation may be the only realistic solution. At the G7 summit in France, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pitched giving “trusted partners” privileged access to the latest frontier models.
This approach contains risks. Access to the American AI stack would then become a privilege that Washington can grant or remove at will, making allies scramble for a place on the “trusted” list.
Washington wants to make itself the gatekeeper of frontier AI models. But in restricting access, it encourages both US rivals and allies to pursue AI alternatives.
Marta Granados Hernández is a US Google Policy Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and a master’s candidate at Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program, concentrating in Science, Technology, and International Affairs.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
A Roadmap for Europe-US Tech Cooperation
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2026-06-17 21:23:08
Royal Marines fast-roped from helicopters onto the deck and took control of the shadow fleet tanker Smyrtos as it passed through the English Channel on June 14, in the UK’s first such operation. It is now held off Portland, watched for environmental and safety risks. The captain has been charged with evading sanctions.
But the vessel and the 100,000 tons of crude oil it carries (with a value of at least $40m) are only being held for now. The ship is likely to be back at sea soon. That has been the shape of almost every one of these operations, with the Smyrtos being only the latest.
Just two weeks earlier, on May 31, French commandos descended from a navy helicopter onto the deck of the Tagor, a sanctioned tanker more than 400 nautical miles west of Brittany. French President Emanuel Macron posted the footage the next day, and Paris framed it as a resolution: the fourth interception of a Russia-linked tanker since the autumn.
The legal trigger in both cases was a flag check. Under Article 110 of the Law of the Sea, a warship may board a vessel it reasonably suspects of sailing without a valid flag. French authorities also said the Tagor was suspected of falsely flying the Cameroonian colors. The boarding team confirmed the irregularity and referred the case to the prosecutor in Brest.
The same logic applied to the Smyrtos. Cameroon had struck it from its registry days earlier, leaving it stateless, and a stateless ship can be boarded by any warship.
Not sabotage, not sanctions-busting. A quarrel over nationality is the surest hook the law offers. The problem is that it’s a fairly small infraction, and that’s where the trouble starts.
Before Tagor, France had boarded three other tankers. The Grinch was held for three weeks, paid a penalty of several million euros, and sailed.
The hardest case, the Boracay, produced France’s most notable result so far: in March, a court in Brest convicted its captain in absentia to a year in prison, a €150,000 ($174,000) fine, and an arrest warrant for a man long gone. The ship was released within days and now carries Russian crude under a new name, the Phoenix.
As for the Tagor, its captain was arrested, then released a day later by the Brest prosecutor, with the vessel left at anchor in a Breton Bay under an administrative order while France worked out who owns it.
Finland went further than anyone. In December 2024, its border guards boarded a ship named Eagle S in the Gulf of Finland after a power cable to Estonia and four communication lines were cut. The case was easier in some respects because the vessel was taken inside territorial waters. A criminal case was launched, and the captain and two officers appeared in the dock.
It failed at the first instance. Last October, the Helsinki District Court found the damage had been done in Finland’s economic zone, beyond its territorial limit. The court ruled that under the law of the sea, jurisdiction lay with the flag state or the crew’s home countries — the Cook Islands, Georgia, and India — not the coastal state that suffered the damage.
Finland was left to cover the defendants’ legal costs. The prosecutor has appealed, and legal commentators argue a higher court may yet read the Convention more pragmatically. But the first-instance signal is already out.
This is the pattern Europe is settling into: a dramatic boarding complete with media-friendly footage of elite personnel storming the bridge, a narrow legal basis, and not much else.
Article 110 gives a legal cause to act, but it does not give the right to confiscate a ship or try its crew. That would require a jurisdictional claim that the flag state and the crew’s governments will not contest. Flags of convenience are designed to muddy legal waters and very often to evade regulation.
None of this makes the boardings pointless. They expose forged papers and raise the cost of doing business, and they tell Moscow that someone is watching. But they are a tactical rather than a strategic measure. Brussels has now listed 632 shadow-fleet vessels and barred them from European ports and services.
Russia, though, still earns more than €10bn a month from oil exports, revenue that vessel listings alone have not yet meaningfully cut.
The significance is about more than oil. The same legal loophole that lets a boarded tanker sail free also protects the next vessel that idles beside the cables and pipelines the Baltic and North Sea economies depend on.
Deterrence at sea has always rested on consequence. And there is no consequence here that a registry on the far side of the world cannot wave away.
There are alternative tools available. The Baltic Sea, for example, is what the International Maritime Organization, the UN’s shipping regulator, calls a particularly sensitive sea area.
That status allows littoral states to apply tougher rules than international law allows elsewhere: tankers can be instructed to steer clear of cables, can be more closely inspected, and detained when unseaworthy. It works on environmental and safety grounds, without needing to prove sanctions-busting or sabotage.
This is a lever Europe has not pulled (some of the Baltic littoral states are deeply fearful of the Russian response). What is missing is the will to build durable legal grounds for condemning these vessels and their cargo, one that does not stop at adding hulls to a list. Sanctioning ships (as the UK did again on June 16) makes little difference unless you hold onto them and remove them from the game.
Until that changes, the footage will keep arriving. A commando on a tanker deck is a powerful image. Moscow can live with images.
Miro Sedlák is an associate research fellow at the Institute for Central Europe and a doctoral candidate in security and defense studies at the Armed Forces Academy of General M. R. Štefánik in Slovakia.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-06-17 02:24:55
Before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of 2022, a small circle of ultra-wealthy businessmen controlled strategic industries, owned national television networks, and financed political parties. Figures such as Rinat Akhmetov, Igor Kolomoisky, and Viktor Pinchuk enjoyed influence that often extended far beyond the boardroom.
Every Ukrainian president promised to dismantle this system. None delivered.
Russia’s war of aggression may have done more to weaken Ukraine’s oligarchs than any anti-corruption reforms. The war has destroyed industrial assets, disrupted exports, centralized political authority, and dramatically reduced their influence over the media.
Yet at the same time, wartime governance, defense procurement, reconstruction, and the growing concentration of resources around the state have laid the foundations for a new generation of politically connected business people. Will Kyiv be able to contain its power?
The roots of Ukraine’s oligarchy lie in the privatizations of the 1990s. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country inherited vast industrial assets, from the steel mills of Kryvyi Rih to the coal mines of Donbas and the gas transit infrastructure linking Russia to European markets.
The transition to a market economy was overseen by weak institutions and an underdeveloped legal system, which were unable to rein in the fierce competition between emerging groups of rapacious and ambitious businesspeople.
Rather than creating a broad class of owners, privatization concentrated strategic assets in the hands of a small number of individuals with access to political decision-makers, regional administrative networks, and financial resources.
Control was frequently secured through non-transparent privatizations and preferential access to state resources. The most famous example was the 2004 sale of the Kryvorizhstal steel plant to a consortium linked to oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk at a price widely criticized as far below market value. Following the Orange Revolution, the sale was overturned, and the plant was re-auctioned in 2005 for more than six times the original price, becoming a symbol of how strategic assets had been concentrated in the hands of politically connected elites. During the 1990s and early 2000s, these figures also acquired banks, media outlets, and political influence.
Political philosopher Mikhail Minakov describes the resulting order as a “Republic of Clans,” with powerful regional financial-industrial groups deeply embedded in state institutions. Donetsk produced the network around Akhmetov and the Party of Regions, while Dnipropetrovsk became associated with influential figures such as Kolomoisky and Pinchuk.
This distinguished Ukraine from Russia, where oligarchs emerged through privatization but evolved differently. In Russia, major business groups were subordinated to a centralized presidential system, and while oligarchs retained enormous wealth, it was dependent on their remaining loyal to the Kremlin.
In Ukraine, no president succeeded in establishing a comparable “power vertical” and instead competing oligarchs financed rival political parties, controlled television networks, supported competing presidential candidates, and used state institutions to advance their interests.
While this competition helped preserve political pluralism and prevented the emergence of a fully authoritarian system, it also delayed the development of rules-based governance.
Political parties often depended on oligarchs for funding, and powerful people, including lawmakers and judges, were routinely tied to competing business groups. The state frequently operated as a battleground for rival clans.
This damaged Ukraine’s democratic development and international reputation while undermining public trust in its institutions and complicating Kyiv’s long-term European ambitions. Anti-corruption reforms launched after the 2014 Revolution of Dignity constrained some oligarchic influence but didn’t dismantle the underlying model.
The full-scale invasion fundamentally altered this balance.
Russia’s occupation and destruction of eastern industrial regions devastated the foundations of several oligarch empires. Rinat Akhmetov, previously Ukraine’s richest man, lost major industrial assets in Mariupol and the occupied Donbas territories, for example.
The war also weakened the oligarchs’ media power. Kyiv introduced a unified national TV news operation, which consolidated many of the country’s broadcasters, and limited the ability of competing oligarch-owned channels to shape political narratives.
Several prominent oligarchs were exiled or marginalized. Viktor Medvedchuk, long viewed as the Kremlin’s primary political ally in Ukraine, was arrested and later exchanged with Russia in a prisoner swap.
Igor Kolomoisky, once considered politically untouchable, was arrested in 2023 on fraud and money laundering charges. Other figures associated with pro-Russian networks fled the country.
The war also accelerated the collapse of business-political networks that benefited from close economic integration with Russia. Several influential business groups depended on commercial ties with Russia. Medvedchuk’s political network, for example, was closely tied to energy trading and pro-Kremlin influence operations that became politically toxic after 2022.
Their assets were sanctioned, media platforms shut down, and political allies marginalized, as public tolerance for Russian influence evaporated.
At the same time as the “traditional” oligarchs were losing money and influence, others were rapidly making fortunes in new areas.
Declaring the end of oligarchy in Ukraine would be premature, not least because the core logic that produced oligarchic behavior remains deeply embedded.
Wealthy people sought political influence not simply out of greed, but because property rights and legal protections were weak, inconsistent, and dependent on political access. Under such conditions, proximity to the state was the most reliable form of business insurance.
The government in Kyiv now controls enormous flows of resources. Defense procurement alone has expanded dramatically since 2022, while reconstruction programs and donor-funded infrastructure projects are creating new opportunities for politically connected actors.
And as Western governments and institutions stand ready to channel hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine’s long-term reconstruction, the risks associated with political favoritism and opaque wartime networks are growing.
Ukraine has continued to face major corruption risks connected to state-controlled financial flows. The 2023 scandal involving inflated food procurement prices for the military highlighted the vulnerabilities created by rapid wartime spending and limited oversight.
To Kyiv’s credit, civil society, investigative journalists, and anti-corruption institutions are more active and resilient than in many other post-Soviet states, and the exposure of corruption has forced high-profile resignations, investigations, and policy responses.
But the structural risks remain serious.
Postwar Ukraine will see a growth in the influence of people connected to the security apparatus. Wartime conditions have significantly expanded the authority of institutions such as the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The agency has become one of the country’s most visible state institutions, conducting high-profile investigations, counterintelligence operations, and sanctions-related actions.
A new generation of oligarchic actors may emerge from wartime state capitalism, producing elites that are likely to be different from the industrial magnates who have dominated Ukraine for decades.
Some may emerge from the rapidly expanding defense-industrial sector, while others could build influence through reconstruction projects financed by international donors. Ukraine’s technology sector, which has remained remarkably resilient during the war, may also produce a new class of politically influential entrepreneurs.
Unless Kyiv succeeds in strengthening the rule of law, judicial independence, transparent competition, and accountability, new business elites are likely to reproduce many of the patterns that characterized the old oligarchs.
Recent polling suggests Ukrainians continue to support anti-corruption reforms and view excessive concentration of political and economic power as a threat to the country’s future.
These attitudes reflect a public demand for rules-based governance. If reconstruction produces transparency, Ukraine could finally break with the post-Soviet model that has constrained its development for decades.
But if wartime centralization and politically connected business groups become permanent features of the postwar economy, Ukraine may simply exchange one form of oligarchy for another.
Kateryna Odarchenko is a political consultant, a partner of the SIC Group Ukraine, and president of the PolitA Institute for Democracy and Development. A specialist practicing in the field of political communication and projects, she has practical experience in the implementation of all-Ukrainian political campaigns and party-building projects.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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