Economic policy in a time of geopolitical upheaval: What is next for Ukraine?”
The inaugural Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues (PEGI) conference convened in December 2025 as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approached its fourth year. The conference took place at a moment when several foundational assumptions of the post–Cold War economic order—open capital markets, predictable trade relations, the separation of economics from security—have come under sustained pressure. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine precipitated the most extensive package of financial and trade sanctions in modern history, triggered an energy price shock that propagated through European inflation and household behavior for years, and created reconstruction needs on a scale not seen in Europe since 1945. These developments demand not merely incremental policy adjustments but a rethinking of the analytical frameworks that guide economic policy.
Across a high-level policy panel and four research papers, the conference addressed a single overarching question: what economic strategies can sustain Ukraine during the war and position it for recovery afterward? The answers that emerged are neither narrowly Ukrainian nor purely academic. They speak to a fundamental reorientation of economic policy in an era where geopolitical shocks, sanctions regimes, and security imperatives reshape the feasible set of policy instruments available to governments.
