Editor’s Note: The Renew Democracy Initiative—publisher of The Next Move—is headed to Ukraine! Starting on Monday, we’ll be sharing daily dispatches from our delegation. This first dispatch is available to all readers. Starting tomorrow, premium subscribers will receive each subsequent Ukraine Dispatch 24 hours before anyone else. Be the first to get on-the-ground news from the frontlines of freedom by upgrading to join our premium subscriber community today! All proceeds go to support the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including humanitarian assistance to communities in Ukraine.
Uriel Epshtein is the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.
You can’t fly to Kyiv.
We take the interconnectedness of the world for granted. It’s rare to find a destination not served by any airline. There are airports in the most remote corners of Alaska with scheduled flights! But the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has suspended all air traffic to and from Ukraine for four years and counting.
So in order to reach the Ukrainian capital from abroad, you have to jump through some hoops.
I’m writing this from a train on my way to Kyiv at the head of a Renew Democracy Initiative delegation. On Saturday afternoon, I got in a cab to JFK airport in New York before hopping on a flight to Warsaw via Paris. Upon landing, we were picked up for a three-hour car ride to the town of Chelm, on the Poland-Ukraine border. There, we boarded a train that would carry us through the night all the way to Kyiv.
(In the middle of a war, Ukrainian train service is still more comfortable and reliable than Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. Go figure!)
The whole ordeal feels like something out of a black-and-white movie about World War II. Yet this is daily life for tens of millions of Ukrainians. Whatever inconvenience I’m enduring as a visitor is only temporary.
I can’t help but think about my Ukrainian-born mom as the train sways beneath me. She made the reverse journey nearly fifty years ago, first on a train from Kyiv to Hungary, then a Soviet satellite state, and finally into Austria and on to the West. As the light fades, I am looking out on the same landscapes, the same trees, roads, and buildings as she did, even as the flags and borders and styles have changed.
Back then, my mom could never have imagined that the USSR would collapse, that Russia would invade Ukraine, and that, in the middle of that unimaginable war, her son would go back to Ukraine. (Twice! This is my second visit since the 2022 invasion.)
If there’s a lesson to be gleaned from these musings, it’s that history is not bound by fixed patterns. On the one hand, that unpredictability explains how a tragedy like the Russian assault on Ukraine could happen when it was unthinkable just a few decades ago. On the other, it’s why the Ukrainian people have continued to defy the experts and analysts, fighting on for their future and their freedom. Four years after the RAND Corporation’s Samuel Charap predicted that Ukraine didn’t stand a chance, Ukraine still has not lost, and Russia still has not won.
People like Charap have been consistently wrong about everything on Ukraine. You can’t grasp the reality of the situation here from a Washington conference room.
That’s why I’m coming back to Ukraine. In the coming days, my colleagues and I will be visiting our humanitarian partners in Ukraine. RDI has delivered over $15 million in direct aid to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began. We’ll also be meeting with the government officials stewarding their country through its darkest hour. We’ll chat with Ukrainian business leaders working to ensure a prosperous future. And we’ll get to know the soldiers who charge into danger every day to protect their nation.
I hope these dispatches bring home the urgency of Ukraine’s fight, but also the resilience and inspiration this country embodies.
For now, it’s time to get some shut-eye. I’ve been traveling for more than a day and the Ambien is about to kick in. I’ll be back with more updates every day.
Don’t miss the next update from Ukraine! Premium subscribers to The Next Move will be the first to receive Ukraine dispatches—24 hours before anyone else. Your contributions support the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including humanitarian assistance to frontline communities in Ukraine.
More from The Next Move:
In Ukraine, Renew Democracy Initiative is Matching Words with Action
We don’t just talk about supporting freedom.
The train journey captures what so many people miss sitting in DC think tanks: Ukraine’s reality is endurance, not theory. Four years of no flights. Overnight trains through war zones. Millions of people living what looks like WWII footage but is actually Sunday commute.
My great-grandparents left Ukraine generations ago. Reading this, I’m thinking about what they fled, what they hoped they were leaving behind, and how history doesn’t stay buried just because we want it to.
Your mom made the reverse journey fifty years ago when USSR collapse was “unimaginable.” Now you’re going back during a war that was “unthinkable” a few years ago. That’s the pattern, history doesn’t run on rails, and the things we assume are permanent turn out to be contingent.
The RAND prediction and the “realist” school kept saying Ukraine would fold because their models don’t account for what people will fight for when the alternative is erasure. They measured military hardware ratios and assumed behavior follows from material advantage. Turns out humans don’t optimize the way spreadsheets predict. They lack behavioral understanding.
The $15M in direct aid matters more than ten think tank papers. You can’t grasp what resilience looks like from a conference room. You have to ride the train.
Looking forward to the dispatches.
—Johan
Stay strong. Stay safe. Keep up the good work.