2026 in review
Analysis published during 2026.
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What accession will do to trade flows
The single market is the endpoint of the trade relationship, and a company can position for it now rather than reacting to it later.
Trade & Investment -
The fields: barter, debt, and then a world market
From barter, debt and abandoned fields to a top-five global exporter. The transformation was real, and it had specific causes.
Agriculture & Food -
Daily life, as a long-term guest saw it change
A long-term foreign resident's account of what changed in daily life, which is a different record from the one made by statistics.
Society & Regions -
Reconstruction as a twenty-year project
Recovery programmes are announced in five-year frames because that is how political attention works. The actual work runs on a much longer clock.
Reconstruction & Recovery -
From neighbourhood policy to accession chapters
From a neighbourhood policy that offered almost nothing to negotiating accession chapters. Measured over twenty years the trajectory is clearer than it looked at any point along it.
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Governance, measured from where the country started
A fair assessment measures against where a country started, not against an ideal. On that basis the record is neither the triumph nor the failure it is usually…
Politics & Governance -
Two currency crises, three shocks and a war, on one page
Two currency crises, three external shocks and a war. What survived all of them is a small number of institutions, and that is the story.
Economy & Macro -
What was built, what was left to decay, and what held
What was built, what was allowed to decay, and what the last four years demonstrated about which of the two mattered.
Energy & Infrastructure -
The economics of joining, from a company balance sheet
Accession is discussed politically and experienced financially. What it does to a company is change the cost of capital and the value of an asset.
Economy & Macro -
Reform fatigue and how it is overcome
Some Ukrainian reforms have held for a decade and some were unwound within a year. The difference is structural and it can be described.
Politics & Governance -
How long accession realistically takes
Every enlargement has taken longer than the candidate hoped and less time than the sceptics predicted. The variables that decide the length are known.
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Entering the Ukrainian market: the checklist I actually give people
After twenty years of answering the same questions, this is the list. Nine items, in the order they should be done, with the reasoning for each — and…
Trade & Investment -
Ukraine's energy system is being rebuilt small: what that means for suppliers
Large thermal units take years to replace. What has actually been built since 2023 is gas piston plant, cogeneration, batteries and rooftop solar — a different market, with…
Energy & Infrastructure -
How to tell whether recovery is working
Money committed is not a measure of recovery. Nor is money spent. The useful indicators are physical and social, and they are harder to report.
Reconstruction & Recovery -
Statehood Day, 15 July 2026
A greeting for the day, on the ordinary business of being a state.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ivana Kupala, 7 July 2026
A midsummer night, and a custom that keeps its own date.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Constitution Day, 28 June 2026
A greeting for Constitution Day, thirty years on from the text.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ivan Kupala: fire, water and the shortest darkness
On the night of 6 to 7 July — or 23 to 24 June, depending on which calendar you keep — people jump over fires, float wreaths downstream…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Working alongside a development bank: what changes when the EBRD is in the deal
Ukraine's largest institutional investor is not a company. Understanding how a development bank underwrites, what it requires and what it de-risks is now a core commercial skill for…
Reconstruction & Recovery -
Vyshyvanka Day, 21 May 2026
A greeting for the day, and a note on where the patterns come from.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The vyshyvanka: embroidery as a written language
Regional patterns are specific enough that a practised eye can place a shirt within about fifty kilometres. The motifs were protective before they were decorative, and the colour…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Easter 2026
The paska, the basket, the greeting exchanged in the same words as always. Twenty-two Easters here, and the form has not changed at all.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Pysanka: the egg as a written charm
The name comes from the verb to write, not to paint. Wax is applied with a stylus, the egg is dyed, and the process repeats from lightest colour…
Folklore & Esoterica -
The rushnyk: cloth as a ritual instrument
A narrow embroidered length of linen appears at every threshold of a Ukrainian life — birth, marriage, burial — and at state ceremonies. It is not decoration. It…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Trypillia: the culture beneath the black soil
Six thousand years ago the land between the Dnipro and the Dnister held some of the largest settlements on earth. They left almost no weapons, a great deal…
Folklore & Esoterica -
The kobzars and the sung epic: a tradition that was ended
Blind itinerant singers carried a body of narrative verse across Ukraine for three centuries, organised into guilds with their own training, rules and secret language. The tradition did…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Molfars: the Carpathian practitioners and what they were for
In the Hutsul villages of the eastern Carpathians there was a specialist who read weather, treated illness and settled disputes nobody wanted in front of a magistrate. The…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Skovoroda: the wandering philosopher and the three worlds
He refused a bishopric, a professorship and a court appointment, and spent thirty years walking between villages with a flute and a manuscript bag. His epitaph is the…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Ukraine Annual Review 2025: twenty-two years of reports, and what they add up to
The final annual review in this series closes a record that began in 2004. Read end to end, it describes an economy that changed almost every structural feature…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Unity Day, 22 January 2026
A greeting for the anniversary, without further commentary.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2025
A fourth full year of operating under wartime conditions closes with the economy stable at a reduced level, the accession programme advancing technically, and the same three unresolved…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Reading a year ahead in a country under pressure: a method rather than a forecast
Annual outlooks for a country in this position are worth very little as predictions and quite a lot as frameworks. What follows is the framework — which variables…
Economy & Macro -
The folk calendar: a working year organised by ritual
Before there were almanacs there were saints' days, and each one carried an instruction: sow now, stop grazing, cut the hay, do not begin anything. The calendar is…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Koliada: the winter cycle, the twelve dishes and a calendar that moved
A sheaf of wheat carried into the house, twelve meatless dishes, carollers with a star, and a wheat-and-poppy dish eaten before anything else. In 2023 the whole cycle…
Folklore & Esoterica
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