Alina Nychyk

This book investigates the making of Ukraine’s foreign policy towards the European Union and Russia between February 2014 and February 2015. To contextualize the events of the first year of the Russian-Ukrainian War, Nychyk lays out the history of the EU-Ukraine-Russia triangle since 1991 and draws lessons relevant for the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The book is based on her doctoral research and rests on a game-theory-inspired approach to foreign policy analysis. It relies on 38 elite interviews, official documents, and media reports. Nychyk uncovers various mutual misperceptions in EU-Ukraine-Russia relations. Looking at Ukraine’s ‘side of the story’, her analysis shows how Russian assertiveness and the EU’s passivity, but also Ukrainian leaders’ limited crisis management experience and erroneous policy decisions contributed to worse outcomes for Ukraine. The latter included poor analysis of foreign interlocutors, trust in their good intentions, and corruption. After 2015, a persistence—although with certain changes—of some of these pathologies left Ukraine in a weaker position in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Alina Nychyk is Doctor in Politics (University of Manchester, 2022), MSc in International International Economic Relations (Wroclaw University of Economics, 2014), and BSc in International Economics (Kyiv National Economic University, 2012). Nychyk had student exchanges at Gazi University in Ankara, Goethe University in Frankfurt on Main and Maastricht University. In 2022, she was a Ukraine Fellow at RECET, Vienna University and in 2023, a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zürich. Alina Nychyk gathered diverse experiences in international companies (e.g. Hewlett Packard), NGOs (Polish Forum of Young Diplomats, Ukraine Democracy Initiative, Promote Ukraine, Professional Government of Ukraine, Young Security Conference), and European institutions (European Commission and European Parliament). Apart from her academic work, she is a social activist, dealing with women’s empowerment and democracy.