Krynytsya (The Well), your wellspring for Ukraine and Ukrainians

Olia Hercules is a cook, teacher, activist and storyteller. Born in the south of Ukraine, Olia has called home many different places, including Cyprus, Italy and the UK. She is an author of four cookbooks, including the award-winning Mamushka and Andre Simone short-listed Summer Kitchens. Apart from researching and writing about her native and adopted foodways, Olia teaches cookery, including ance...

Maksym Isakov and his family emigrated to the U.S. from Vinnitsya, Ukraine, in 2022 shortly after the country was invaded by Russia. He emigrated with his family to Maine, where he had previously spent some time as a student and decided to start a local coffee roasting business Kavka Coffee. John Ostrand, the owner of Green Tree Coffee & Tea in nearby Lincolnville acted as a mentor and helped him...

Adrian Karatnycky has had an extensive career in research, diplomacy, and international advocacy and is a well-known journalist, author and analyst on Ukraine affairs. In this interview he offers an overview of his 2024 book, "Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia". Mr. Karatnycky looks at Ukraine's ongoing successful attacks on Russian infrastructure during the war and of...

Daria Synhaievska is an analyst and journalist with the multimedia project UkraineWorld. For a period of time, she cohosted the podcast, "Explaining Ukraine". In her December 2025 analysis, "The Grid, the State, and the War: Ukraine’s Double Fight Against Missiles and Corruption", Ms. Synhaievska outlines the many challenges faced by Kyiv in rebuilding the grid, confronting deep corruption and fig...

Yuriy Vysoven is the founder of the Ukrainian startup company Aerobavovna. The company produces aerostats (aerial baloons) that are used for military reconnaissance, surveillance and electronic warfare during the Russian invasion. Mr. Vysoven reviews the history of aerostats in war and points out the advantage of using this type of technology for defense. https://www.aerobavovna.com/ https://techu...

Peter Dickinson has been based in Ukraine for more than 25 years as a journalist, editor, and commentator. He is currently the Editor for the Atlantic Council's UkraineAlert blog and Chief Editor of Business Ukraine magazine. Mr. Dickinson looks at the recent Hungarian general election and how the win by Tisza party member Peter Magyar might change the countyr's foreign policy towards Ukraine. He...

Kateryna Odarchenko is a political consultant and strategist for Ukraine as well as for several other countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. She is the founder and CEO of the SIC Group Ukraine and president of the PolitA Institute for Democracy and Development. Ms. Odarchenko offers her perspectives on politics and democracy in Ukraine. She also discusses whether it is possible to...

Steven Moore is a former chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives and founder of the NGO the Ukraine Freedom Project (UFP). He founded it in 2022 to help Ukraine with aid during the Russian invasion. He has been actively involved in efforts to convince U.S. conservatives, especially in the House of Representatives, to support military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. Mr. Moore also hel...

Olena Malytska is the CEO of ISE Group, a nonprofit organization operating as a think tank and corporate accelerator, with offices in Kyiv, Warsaw, and Washington, D.C. Alexander Romanishyn serves as a board member of the organization. In partnership with the Ukrainian American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, ISE released a landmark study in the fall 2025 titled "Economic Impact of Ukrainian-Ame...

Steven Pifer was the United States ambassador to Ukraine from 1998-2000. Currently he is an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a nonresident fellow with the Brookings Institution. Ambassador Pifer does not think the U.S. diplomatic effort to end the war in Ukraine is working. He believes Russian President Putin is unwilling to make any concessions to en...

Michael Gulachok is a third generation Ukrainian American and a long time community activist in Binghamton, New York. His paternal grandparents were among the first wave of Ukrainians who came to the U.S. in the early part of the twentieth century. They came from the Boyko villge of Ulucz in southeast Poland (then in Galicia) which is known for its 16th century wooden tserkva (Ukrainian church). M...

Jurij Fedynskyj is a Ukrainian American composer, musician, singer-songwriter, luthier, cultural activist and teacher. His maternal grandparents came to the U.S. from Ukraine. He grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, but left the U.S. in 1998 to pursue his music education in Ukraine. Mr. Fedynskyj now lives and works with his wife and children in the village of Kryachkivka in the Poltava region of e...

The economist Timothy Ash is an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House in the UK and a senior sovereign strategist at RBC Bluebay Asset Management in London. He is a seasoned expert on political and economic affairs in Russia and Ukraine. Mr. Ash talks about the major challenges Ukraine faces in the current peace negotiations brokered by the U.S. between them and Russi...

Ukrainian American Mark Temnycky is a geopolitics senior contributor to Forbes magazine. He is also a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Mr. Temnycky is an award-winning freelance journalist who has covered American, European, and Eurasian national security, foreign policy, energy security, politics, sports, and economics for almost a decade. In this interview, he reviews...

Journalist Ostap Yarysh came to the U.S. in 2019 to take a job with the Voice of America (VOA) Ukrainian language service. He worked there until early 2025 when the Trump administration shut down this and many other VOA language services. He now works as a media advisor to the non-profit organization Razom for Ukraine. Mr. Yarysh also wrote a book for the audience in Ukraine, “This is America: Non...

Michael Bohnert is an engineer and a defense researcher with RAND, a U.S. non-profit global policy think tank. Mr. Bohnert reviews what it will take for Ukraine to maintain its defenses against Russia in the current war. He also considers what the vulnerabilities are for both countries. And, he examines Ukraine's drone strikes against Russia's energy infrastructure and their potential impact on th...

Anastasiia Vlasenko had to flee Kherson, Ukraine, after the Russian invasion in 2022. She has taken a very difficult and negative experience and transformed it into very positive energy. Ms. Vlasenko is the vice president with Brave Generation, a New-York-based non-profit actively working to empower young Ukrainians with education, mentorship, and mental health support for post-war reconstruction....

Ukrainian Canadian Andy Semotiuk is a community activist, writer, immigration attorney and observer of Ukraine affairs. He has been very active in the Ukrainian diaspora in North America since his college student days in the 1970's. At the current time, Mr. Semotiuk serves as an immigration attorney both in the U.S. and Canada. In this interview, he talks about his career and offers insights on bo...

Anders Aslund is a Swedish economist, former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a preeminent specialist on East European economies. He has been closely involved with Ukraine and its economy since the 1980's. In this interview, Mr. Aslund talks about the Russian economy and the effect on it of Western sanctions during its war with Ukraine. He reviews Ukraine's attacks on Russia's oil industr...

Ukrainian American Christina Pitio is a clinical psychology Master's Degree student at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. Her graduate thesis is entitled: "The Mental and Emotional Effects of the Ukraine War on the Ukrainian-American Diaspora". In this study, Ms. Pitio hopes to document the emotional and psychologyical impact of the Russian invasion against Ukraine on the Ukr...

Deborah Fairlamb has been actively involved in investment and business development in Ukraine for more than 10 years. Together with her business partner Justin Zeefe, she established Green Flag Ventures in 2023. Green Flag Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on technology products and services in Ukraine and, in particular, on the defense tech sector. Ms. Fairlamb reviews the current state...

Former U.S. ambassador to Estonia George Kent recently completed a 4,427 mile cross-country cycling fundraiser to support Ukrainian army units on the front lines of the Russian invasion and raise awareness about Ukraine. This three-month trip began in Portland, Oregon and ended in Washington, D.C. He made this trip together with his wife Velida Kitaina, who is a Crimean Tatar and a Ukrainian Ameri...

Professor Volodymyr Dubovyk is the Director, Center for International Studies at Mechnikov National University, in Odesa, Ukraine. He is a Ukrainian expert on U.S.-Ukraine relations and security in the Black Sea region. He has published numerous articles on US-Ukraine relations, regional and international security, and Ukraine’s foreign policy. In this interview, Professor Dubovyk reviews the chan...

Peter Dickinson has had a long career in various roles as a Ukraine affairs analyst. He is currently the Editor for the Atlantic Council's UkraineAlert blog and Chief Editor of Business Ukraine magazine. In this interview, Mr. Dickinson offers his insights about the current situation in the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. He looks at the extreme Russification policy and other difficult c...

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul became the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University in 1995. He is also the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Prof. McFaul commends President Trump's efforts to engage Russian President Putin to end the war in Ukraine, but thinks...