2022 in review
Analysis published during 2022.
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St Nicholas Day, 19 December 2022
A greeting for a St Nicholas morning that arrived in the dark, in the first winter of blackouts.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Money for a whole year, agreed in advance
In December 2022 the European Union agreed a macro-financial assistance package covering the whole of the following year. After ten months of emergency tranches, Ukraine could finally plan…
War economy -
The price cap: a sanction designed not to remove the oil
An embargo removes a supplier from the market and the price goes up. The cap that took effect in December 2022 tried something subtler: let the oil flow…
Foreign relations -
Teaching through a blackout
An online school year assumes electricity and internet. In the winter of 2022 Ukraine had neither reliably, and the education system had to be redesigned around outage schedules…
Culture and identity -
A hospital cannot run on a schedule of outages
Most buildings can wait for the power to come back. An operating theatre, a neonatal unit and a dialysis ward cannot. Keeping hospitals energised through the winter of…
Humanitarian dimension -
Holodomor Remembrance Day, 26 November 2022
A remembrance message in a year of blackouts, when the candle in the window was not only symbolic.
National Days & Anniversaries -
A warm room, a socket and a kettle
When the power goes out in November, the humanitarian question becomes very simple and very physical. The answer that winter was thousands of heated points with electricity, connectivity…
Humanitarian dimension -
Generators, transformers and the winter the grid was attacked
From October 2022 the energy system came under sustained attack. What arrived from Europe in response was not a policy document. It was autotransformers on low-loaders, and thousands…
Domestic balance -
Kherson: clearance begins the day after
When Kherson was liberated in November 2022, the sappers went in almost immediately. Clearance is not what happens after recovery. It is the thing that has to happen…
Domestic balance -
Copying the archive before it can be lost
A physical collection can be evacuated. A digital one can be copied, and a copy in three countries cannot be destroyed by anything. Through 2022 an enormous amount…
Culture and identity -
Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language 2022
Eighteen years after arriving unable to say anything, a note on what learning a language actually gives you, written on the day set aside for it.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Living on a Ukrainian pension
Ukraine has a very large pensioner population and a pension that does not cover a normal life. How households manage is worth describing precisely.
Society & Regions -
One table for everyone paying for the rebuild
By late 2022 dozens of governments and institutions were committing money to Ukraine recovery. Without a single coordinating structure, that would have produced overlap, gaps and forty separate…
War economy -
Machinery Directive compliance for the Ukrainian market
An importer placing machinery on the market carries obligations that most importers do not know they have, and a file they are expected to be able to produce.
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
The Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the transmission of learning
An institution founded in the seventeenth century, closed in the nineteenth, and refounded in the twentieth. What it transmitted across those gaps is the interesting part.
Folklore & Esoterica -
Ukraine Market Report — Q3 2022
A grain corridor arrangement signed in Istanbul in July reopened maritime exports from three ports, and a currency adjustment in the same month restored some of the competitiveness…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Getting goods in: the routes and what each costs
There are four ways to get a container into Ukraine and they differ by a factor of several in cost and by weeks in time. Choosing badly is…
Trade & Investment -
One declaration for the whole route: joining common transit
On 1 October 2022 Ukraine acceded to the Convention on a Common Transit Procedure. For a lorry crossing three borders, it replaced three sets of paperwork with one…
Foreign relations -
Moving the state to the cloud
In 2022 Ukraine changed its own law so that state data could be held outside the country, then moved it. The decision looks obvious now and was contested…
Energy & Infrastructure -
Skovoroda: the wandering philosopher and the three worlds
An eighteenth-century philosopher who refused every position offered to him and spent thirty years walking between villages. He is read again now, and the reasons say something about…
Folklore & Esoterica -
The Kharkiv region, and clearance at agricultural scale
The territory recovered in the Kharkiv region in September 2022 was not mostly urban. It was farmland, and clearing farmland is a different problem with a different economic…
Domestic balance -
Telecommunications that stayed up
A mobile network needs power at every base station. Keeping a country connected through repeated blackouts was a logistics operation more than a technical one.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Filling the storage before the cold
Ukraine holds some of the largest gas storage capacity in Europe. Filling it before the winter of 2022 was a financing problem more than an engineering one, and…
Domestic balance -
The bandura and its repertoire
The bandura is not simply a national instrument. It is a specific technology built for a specific job, and the job was carrying long narrative songs.
Folklore & Esoterica -
A school year that began with a shelter requirement
On 1 September 2022 the Ukrainian school year opened under a rule nobody had needed before: a school could hold classes in person only if it had a…
Culture and identity -
Knowledge Day 2022
The first of September in the first war year, when a school could only teach in person if it had a shelter for everyone inside it.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Supplying a health system that cannot pause
A health service still has to treat diabetes, deliver babies and manage cancer while it treats trauma. Keeping the ordinary side of medicine supplied was as much of…
Humanitarian dimension -
Independence Day 2022: the anniversary that fell on the six-month mark
Thirty-one years of independence and six months of full-scale war fall on the same date. What the economy looks like when a third of it disappears in a…
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine and the global food supply
When Ukrainian grain stops moving, the effect is not felt in Europe. It is felt in North Africa, the Middle East and East Africa, where the buyers are.
Agriculture & Food -
The slow construction of a capital market
Ukraine has a functioning government bond market and almost no equity market. The asymmetry is not an accident and it tells you what infrastructure exists.
Economy & Macro -
Overland export and the neighbours
When the sea closed, grain went west by rail and road through four countries. The route worked, and it produced frictions that were entirely predictable.
Agriculture & Food -
Companies that moved west and kept operating
Several thousand businesses physically relocated within Ukraine and restarted production. What the successful ones had in common is instructive for anyone thinking about continuity planning.
Trade & Investment -
The trust fund that paid the salaries
By mid-2022 the World Bank administered channel was moving contributions from many governments into Ukrainian budget spending — teachers, doctors, emergency workers, pensions — with verification attached to…
War economy -
Where Ukrainians get information
The Ukrainian media landscape shifted from television owned by a small number of people to messaging channels owned by nobody in particular. Both arrangements have problems.
Society & Regions -
Institutions that kept working
The prediction in early 2022 was that the Ukrainian state would stop functioning. Understanding why it did not is more useful than celebrating that it did not.
Politics & Governance -
The grain corridor: how the Istanbul arrangement works and what it does not cover
Three ports reopened under a monitored corridor with a joint coordination centre. The first vessel sailed this week. For anyone in the grain trade, the operational detail matters…
Agriculture & Food -
The Black Sea Grain Initiative
The grain corridor is remembered as a diplomatic achievement. It was also a shipping operation with an inspection regime, and the logistics were as difficult as the negotiation.
Agriculture & Food -
Governing under martial law, commercially
Martial law changes a number of things a company needs to know about, and most of them are not the ones people expect.
Politics & Governance -
Storks, cranes and the birds that carry meaning
In Ukrainian custom certain birds are not decoration. They are attached to specific ideas — arrival, departure, the household, the soul — and the attachments are remarkably consistent.
Folklore & Esoterica -
The grain corridor, and the ships that carried it
On 22 July 2022 an arrangement was reached in Istanbul to move Ukrainian grain out through the Black Sea. The first vessel sailed in August. For importing countries…
Humanitarian dimension -
Gold restricted, and food deliberately left alone
The seventh package of July 2022 added a ban on russian gold. It also did something less noticed and more important: it wrote explicit carve-outs to keep food…
Foreign relations -
The railway as an energy and logistics system
Ukrainian railways carry freight, passengers, evacuations and diplomats. They are also one of the country's largest electricity consumers, which makes them an energy story.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Volunteering and the associational habit
Ukraine has an unusually strong capacity for self-organisation without instruction. Where that came from, and what it is not, is worth setting out carefully.
Society & Regions -
Day of Ukrainian Statehood 2022
A new date in the calendar, marking a very old thing: the long line of Ukrainian statehood running back to Kyivan rus.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q2 2022
Land corridors to the EU absorbed what the ports could not, candidate status was granted in June, and the constraint on the entire economy became the throughput of…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Wells, springs and the beliefs attached to water
Water is treated as a boundary, a remedy and a witness. Most of the practices around it turn out to have a public health logic underneath.
Folklore & Esoterica -
The Solidarity Lanes, and moving grain without a sea
When the ports closed, a country that exported most of its grain by ship had to move it by rail and road instead. The logistics of that are…
Trade & Investment -
Ivana Kupala, 7 July 2022
A midsummer greeting in a year when open fires and river gatherings were not possible in most of the country.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Lugano: the conference that set the rules before the money
In July 2022 the recovery conference in Lugano produced something more durable than pledges. It produced principles — transparency, reform, local ownership — written into the framework before…
War economy -
Charms and spoken formulas
The spoken charm is a genuine literary genre with a stable structure, a fixed set of images and a considerable body of collected text.
Folklore & Esoterica -
Borscht enters the UNESCO list, and the reason is not culinary
On 1 July 2022 UNESCO inscribed the culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking on its list of intangible heritage in need of urgent safeguarding. It sounds like a small…
Culture and identity -
Permits abolished: the road transport agreement
Ukrainian hauliers had always operated on a quota of permits. In 2022 the European Union suspended the quota entirely, and a lorry could run to any member state…
Foreign relations -
From emergency connection to commercial export
In March the Ukrainian grid was connected to Europe as an emergency measure. By the end of June it was selling electricity into the European market — three…
Domestic balance -
Candidate status: what it gives, what it does not, and the seven conditions
Granted on 23 June, four months after application. It confers no new market access. What it does is convert a political aspiration into a file with conditions, assessments…
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Constitution Day, 28 June 2022
A short note on the anniversary in a year when the document was being defended rather than debated.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Joining the common transit system
A lorry crossing three borders used to need a customs procedure at each. Under common transit it needs one, opened at the start and closed at the end.
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Candidate status, granted in June
On 23 June 2022 the European Council granted Ukraine the status of candidate for European Union membership, four months after the application. It came with seven conditions, and…
Foreign relations -
Cash, rather than parcels
The largest humanitarian programmes of 2022 did not distribute goods. They transferred money directly to households, because the shops were open and people knew better than any agency…
Humanitarian dimension -
Ukrainian research joins the European programme
In June 2022 Ukraine was formally associated to Horizon Europe, the European Union research and innovation programme. Ukrainian institutions could apply on the same terms as those in…
Culture and identity -
Hydropower and pumped storage
The most useful thing a hydro plant does in a modern grid is not generate. It is start and stop within minutes, which nothing else on the system…
Energy & Infrastructure -
Running a macroeconomy under fire
Ukraine's central bank and finance ministry faced a set of textbook-defying conditions in 2022 and produced a stabilisation that most forecasts said was impossible.
Economy & Macro -
Building rehabilitation capacity from a standing start
Acute surgery saves a life in hours. Rehabilitation determines what that life looks like for the next fifty years, and Ukraine needed far more of it than it…
Humanitarian dimension -
Coal, then oil: the packages that touched energy revenue
The early measures hit banks and technology. In April and June 2022 the European Union went after the revenue itself, with a coal embargo and then a phased…
Foreign relations -
Opishnia and the clay tradition
A town in the Poltava region has been making pots for a very long time, and it survived the twentieth century by becoming a museum of itself while…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Irrigation in the south, before and after
Southern Ukraine farmed with irrigation built decades ago. Much of it is now gone, and what replaces it will determine what the region grows.
Agriculture & Food -
The first things rebuilt were the ways back in
Early recovery in the Kyiv region did not begin with housing. It began with bridges, power lines and water mains — the things without which nobody could return…
War economy -
Vyshyvanka Day, 19 May 2022
A greeting for the day, marked in a spring when a great many shirts were a long way from the wardrobe they came out of.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The philosopher's museum burned, and the response was immediate
In May 2022 the museum of Hryhorii Skovoroda in Skovorodynivka was destroyed by fire after a strike. The collection had been evacuated in time. The response that followed…
Culture and identity -
Localisation requirements in public tenders
Ukraine introduced local content requirements in public procurement for certain categories. The policy is defensible, the risks are real, and both deserve stating.
Trade & Investment -
The small cities nobody writes about
Most Ukrainians do not live in Kyiv, Lviv or Odesa. They live in towns of thirty to a hundred thousand people, and those towns have a specific economic…
Society & Regions -
Easter 2022
The baskets were still filled and still blessed. That is the whole of what I want to say about this one.
National Days & Anniversaries -
How the shock propagated: the war's economic effects beyond Ukraine
Four transmission channels carried the 2022 shock outward — energy, food, migration and defence spending — and each one worked on a different timescale with different geography.
Economy & Macro -
Clearing the Kyiv region, street by street
When the withdrawal from the Kyiv region came at the end of March 2022, the towns north of the capital could not simply be reoccupied. Every garden, verge…
Domestic balance -
Ukraine Market Report — Q1 2022
The full-scale invasion began on 24 February. The ports closed, the exchange rate was fixed, capital controls were imposed, and the banking and payments systems continued operating without…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Candidate status and the seven recommendations
Candidate status came with seven conditions. Reading them now, what stands out is how specific they were and how directly they addressed the things a foreign investor actually…
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Channels built to carry money at scale
Emergency lending works once. What Ukraine needed by spring 2022 was plumbing — standing channels through which many donors could send money to one budget without twenty separate…
War economy -
Roaming, digital services and the single market
Abolishing roaming charges sounds like a consumer convenience. It is one of the more effective integration measures available, for reasons that are not about phone bills.
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Lviv and the western shift
A city that was a tourist destination and a mid-sized IT centre became, within weeks, the logistics and relocation hub of the country. A good deal of that…
Society & Regions -
Before rebuilding: the work of counting what was lost
Reconstruction had not begun in the first weeks and could not have. What did begin was the assessment work underneath it — the registers, the methodologies and the…
War economy -
The grid that joined Europe in three weeks
Ukraine disconnected from the post-Soviet grid on 24 February for a scheduled isolation test and never reconnected. On 16 March its power system was synchronised with continental Europe…
Domestic balance -
The road transport agreement and the open border
Liberalising road haulage between Ukraine and the European Union removed a permit system that had limited volumes for decades, and it produced a dispute worth understanding.
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Exporting electricity to the European Union
A country that had electricity to sell westward was making a statement about its own system, and earning foreign currency while doing it.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Schools that opened their doors, and universities that made room
Under temporary protection, Ukrainian children had the right to schooling from the day they arrived. Across Europe, schools took them in mid-term, and universities and research institutes opened…
Culture and identity -
Sandbags around statues: protecting heritage in the first weeks
Museum staff packed collections into basements. Conservators abroad sent fire-retardant sheeting and packing materials. UNESCO began documenting damage. Very little of this made the news, and all of…
Culture and identity -
Emergency financing: keeping a state solvent
A government still has to pay pensions, salaries and hospitals while its revenue collapses. In March 2022 the international financial institutions moved faster than their own procedures normally…
War economy -
International Women's Day, 8 March 2022
A short message on a day that arrived two weeks into something nobody was ready for.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Demining: a capability that already existed, scaled up
Ukraine had been clearing explosive remnants in the east since 2015, with international operators working alongside the State Emergency Service. That experience became the foundation for a far…
Domestic balance -
Synchronising with continental Europe
Connecting two power systems is not a matter of closing a switch. The engineering behind Ukraine joining the European grid is worth understanding properly, because it explains why…
Energy & Infrastructure -
Medical evacuation: patients moved to European hospitals
A hospital under pressure cannot treat everyone. From March 2022 the EU Civil Protection Mechanism began moving Ukrainian patients to hospitals across Europe, and the World Health Organization…
Humanitarian dimension -
Temporary protection: a directive used for the first time
The European Union had a mechanism for mass displacement on its books since 2001 and had never once used it. On 4 March 2022 it was activated, and…
Humanitarian dimension -
The sanctions record: the first weeks
Within days, measures that had been discussed for years as theoretical options were adopted together by the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and…
Foreign relations -
The application signed on the fifth day
On 28 February 2022, five days into the full-scale invasion, Ukraine formally applied for European Union membership. Two weeks later it was answering the Commission questionnaire that begins…
Foreign relations -
The Ukraine–Turkey free trade agreement
An agreement fifteen years in negotiation was signed in February 2022. What it contains, and what it will actually change, are worth separating.
Trade & Investment -
The Lugano principles and the conditions of help
The recovery conference in Lugano set out principles for how Ukraine's reconstruction should be conducted. They are worth reading because they answer the wrong-donor problem in advance.
Reconstruction & Recovery -
Ukraine Annual Review 2021: the best export year and the last normal one
A record harvest, favourable terms of trade, a land market opened after twenty years, and an energy price shock — closing with a risk premium that markets had…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Day of Unity 2022
A January day about lands held together, marked as it always is.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2021
A record export year closing against rising security risk premia. Financial markets priced the risk from November onward while the real economy continued operating normally.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Christmas, 7 January 2022
A Christmas greeting on an ordinary January evening, with the tables as full as they had been for years.
National Days & Anniversaries -
New Year 2022
A New Year greeting written on the first of January 2022, which reads differently now than it did then.
National Days & Anniversaries
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