Domestic balance
Handing the programme to its owner
International mine action operations eventually leave. What determines the outcome is whether a national authority exists that can run the programme afterwards.
Domestic balance
Institutions, governance, corruption, elections deferred — how a state holds itself together under permanent emergency.
Domestic balance
A fourth winter, and a grid that has learned
Entering the winter of 2025 the Ukrainian power system was still under attack and still standing. What changed was the design philosophy.
Domestic balance
Who does the clearing
The constraint on demining is trained people, and by 2025 the composition of that workforce had changed in a way worth recording.
Domestic balance
Nuclear safety under conditions nobody designed for
Ukraine generates a majority of its electricity from nuclear plants. Keeping them safe during a war has required an international presence with no real precedent.
Domestic balance
Land released, and what happens the day after
Clearance is measured in hectares released. What matters is whether the hectare is farmed the following season, and that is a separate problem.
Domestic balance
Storage, and the value of an hour
By 2025 the most valuable addition to the Ukrainian grid was not new generation. It was batteries, and the reason is a matter of timing rather…
Domestic balance
When the target moved to gas
Attacks on gas production and storage in the winter of 2025 changed the problem again, and the response drew on a European system Ukraine was already…
Domestic balance
Building the machines instead of importing them
Mechanical demining machines are specialised, expensive and were in short supply worldwide. By 2025 Ukraine was manufacturing them, and an industry had formed around a problem.
Domestic balance
A third winter, planned rather than survived
By the winter of 2024 the energy response had a settled architecture: imports across the European interconnection, distributed generation at critical loads, protected substations and a…
Domestic balance
Land handed back, hectare by hectare
By late 2024 the demining sector was producing what any industry produces: measurable output. Hundreds of thousands of hectares surveyed, a growing share released, and a…
Domestic balance
Machines, dogs and the limits of both
Clearance is often pictured as a person with a detector. In practice it is a sequence of methods, each faster and less certain than the next.
Domestic balance
Rebuilding generation in the months you have
The strikes of spring 2024 took out a large share of Ukraine's thermal generation. The summer was spent doing something about it before October.
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