In his latest analysis for the Carnegie Endowment, Balázs Jarábik examines Ukraine’s sweeping government and security reshuffle as preparation for a longer war. With external financing and Western security support increasingly secured, President Zelensky has shifted from accommodating reform-driven power sharing toward tightening political control over the institutions that will manage the next phase of the conflict.
The dismissal of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov - and, following public backlash, commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi - exposed the deeper dilemma. Fedorov offered an attractive vision in which drones, technology, professionalization and reform could compensate for Russia’s structural advantages. But technological success has not resolved Ukraine’s manpower shortages and growing resistance to coercive mobilization.
Jarábik concludes that Zelensky ultimately sided neither with the reform camp nor the military establishment, but with political control. The reshuffle reaffirms a principle of his governance: no institution or individual, regardless of popularity or achievements, can be allowed to develop into an independent center of political authority.
In his latest Moldova analysis for the Carnegie Endowment, Balázs Jarábik argues that the country’s governing PAS party is confronting a new challenge: not another geopolitical battle over Moldova’s direction, but the much harder task of governing effectively.
A succession of corruption scandals, Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu’s resignation, a failed fiscal reform, and unresolved tensions around Transnistria and Gagauzia have exposed the limits of a highly centralized governing model. Yet these problems do not amount to a return to Moldova’s oligarchic past: independent media are uncovering wrongdoing, officials are resigning, and European integration remains the country’s dominant strategic project.
The deeper challenge is that geopolitics can no longer compensate indefinitely for weaknesses in policymaking, institutional coordination and political inclusion. Having successfully navigated successive crises and secured Moldova’s European course, PAS must now return to the promise that originally brought it to power: building a capable and accountable state. Whether it succeeds may ultimately matter more for Moldova’s European future than the speed of accession negotiations.
In this analysis for the Carnegie Endowment, Balázs Jarábik analyzes an underappreciated consequence of the war: Ukraine is emerging as a regional military and political power increasingly willing to use its new capabilities to shape the behavior of its neighbors. Belarus provides the clearest test. Kyiv long sought to avoid pushing Alexander Lukashenko further into Moscow’s embrace, but that restraint is giving way to a more assertive approach as Russian-Belarusian military integration deepens and Washington opens its own channel to Minsk. Ukraine’s threat to strike infrastructure supporting Russian drone operations demonstrated both its growing reach and Belarus’s vulnerability. Jarábik argues that this emerging regional posture extends beyond Belarus to Ukraine’s increasingly assertive relations with Poland and Hungary. The longer-term question is how Ukraine emerges from the war - and how its neighbors adjust.
In an analysis for IPS Journal, Balázs Jarábik looks at Ukraine’s latest government reshuffle as a response to mounting wartime and political pressures. He argues that personnel changes reflect the leadership’s effort to manage political, economic, and social strains while maintaining continuity at the core of power. Jarábik highlights that reshuffles – dismissing Andriy Yermak and appointing Kyrylo Budanov as head of the Office of the President - signaling responsiveness without fundamentally altering the system. While they may temporarily ease tensions, they do little to address deeper institutional challenges. The result is a pattern of adaptive governance, where stability is preserved, but underlying pressures continue to accumulate.
Following a previous analysis about the prospects of engagement, Balázs Jarábik - after trips to Minsk - explores the limits of pragmatic dialogue as well as evolving political landscape in Belarus. He argues that while the regime maintains firm control through repression, avoiding being directly engaged into the war, but society’s dynamics have not disappeared. Belarus is in the a phase of managed stagnation, where the system has adapted to endure. Societal undercurrents and elite recalibrations continue to shape the country’s trajectory, even in the absence of open political competition. The result is a political environment that appears static but under current is fluid, with long-term implications for both domestic stability and external engagement.
In another signature, long paper for the Carnegie Endowment, Balázs Jarábik with Maria Levonova examines how Russia’s full-scale invasion is reshaping Ukraine’s internal geography. The authors argue that the war is accelerating deep regional realignments - demographic, economic, and political - that define not only wartime governance but also postwar reconstruction. The analysis highlights the shift of economic activity and population toward the west and center of the country, alongside the growing role of regional authorities and new administrative dynamics. These changes are not temporary disruptions but structural transformations, likely to persist beyond the war. Thus, the reconstruction effort will not restore the pre-war status quo but will instead consolidate a reconfigured Ukraine with new regional balances and priorities.
In a signature, long paper for the Carnegie Endowment, Balázs Jarábik and Anatol Oktisyuk writes about gradual re-emergence of Ukraine’s domestic politics as a key battlefield alongside the war itself. While wartime unity has largely held, underlying political competition, institutional tensions, and elite rivalries are beginning to resurface.
The paper highlights that this “unfreezing” of politics reflects both the strain of prolonged war and the anticipation of a post-war transition. As decision-making becomes more contested and informal power centers evolve, Ukraine faces the challenge of maintaining cohesion while accommodating renewed political pluralism. The analysis underscores that managing this internal dynamic will be as critical as developments on the front line.