Ukraine is currently receiving substantial inflows of foreign aid from western donors to help the country withstand the Russian aggression. The foreign aid flows partly reflect altruistic motives from the donor side, but also donor’s domestic strategic foreign policy objectives as the war is seen as part of a battle over the future world order. In this brief, Anders Olofsgård, discuss the academic literature that has analysed the existence and consequences of strategic motivations behind aid flows more generally, and draw some preliminary insights for the case of Ukraine.

Sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine are argued to be the strongest and farthest-reaching imposed on a major power after WWII, more numerous and more comprehensive than all other measures currently in force against all other sanctioned countries. A question often asked, which is hard to answer, is whether sanctions are effective.

This brief provides an overview of the discussion on the relative merits of grants and loans in the literature on foreign aid, including a short section on debt relief initiatives. These claims are then tested against the context of Ukrainian post-war reconstruction, and it is argued that the case for providing grants is very strong. This argument is based on the magnitude of the investments needed, the need to create a long-run sustainable economy, the road towards a future EU membership, and the global value of a democratic and prosperous Ukraine as a bulwark against autocratic forces.

Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, the West has been contemplating sanctions on Russian oil and gas imports. For the EU, this plan poses a significant challenge due to the long-existing sizable dependency on Russian energy. In this brief, we outline the possible effects of banning Russian oil and gas on the energy import bill across the EU.

Against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Swedish financial support to Russia has become questioned. Anders Olofsgård, Associate Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) and Deputy Director at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), explains why we need to understand what that support is actually financing and what its purpose is.

SITE researchers Maria Perrotta Berlin and Anders Olofsgård together with SITE research affiliated faculty Raj M. Desai (Georgetown University and Brookings Institution) examine the effect of a country's membership in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on the subnational distribution of World Bank aid. They find support for the hypothesis that aid recipient governments are better able to utilize aid flows for political favoritism during periods in which they are of geo-strategic value to major donors.

What is the biggest problem with imposing sanctions on autocracies? How are the cost of sanctions shared across the sanctioned party? Jonathan Lehne, Assistant Professor at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), talks about the "Fortress Russia" strategy and how the Russian economy's exposure to sanctions has changed since 2014.

Can oil and gas sanctions and EU’s plans to reduce dependence on Russian energy affect EU transition to renewables? Elena Paltseva, Associate Professor at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), shares her insights and discusses the current European growth strategy.

As fighting across Ukraine escalates and the world reacts, how will the sanctions affect Russia and can we expect them to be effective? Maria Perrotta Berlin, Assistant Professor at Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), shares her insights and discusses the potential effects of sanctions against Russia.

Given the current situation, Swedish financial support to Russia has been put into question. This was recently discussed in the major Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, in an article in which Anders Olofsgård, Deputy Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), was interviewed among others.