Author
Liubov Tsybulska photo

Liubov Tsybulska

Liubov Tsybulska is a strategic communications expert and a leading authority on hybrid threats in Ukraine. As the founder and current director of NGO "Join Ukraine," she leverages her extensive expertise to address critical national security challenges. Previously, she served as the inaugural Head of the Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security under Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and Information Policy.

Articles

Russia is giving its masterclass in election interference ahead of Hungary's vote

When Hungarians go to the polls tomorrow, they will be voting in an environment poisoned by probably the largest documented campaign of foreign election interference in EU history. The central paradox of this campaign is not that Russia is interfering — that has long become the norm. It is that Russia is doing so while wearing a Ukrainian disguise. In Hungarian elections this year, the Kremlin has bundled everything into one package and added an element never before deployed at this scale: the
An oil terminal in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Sept. 26, 2025.

How oil jackpot and sanctions failure are funding Russia's war

As recently as this January and February, Russia was going through its worst fiscal period since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Oil and gas budget revenues had fallen by 50% year-on-year, and the deficit for the first two months reached $42 billion. The government was preparing to slash non-military spending by 10%. It seemed like sanctions were finally working. Then this happened: the United States struck Iran, and the Strait of Hormuz — through which one-fifth of the world'
An MBDA Storm Shadow/Scalp cruise missile on display at the Paris Air Show in Paris, France, on June 17, 2025.

Ukraine used Storm Shadow to strike Russia's most irreplaceable weapons factory — and why it matters

As you read this, somewhere at a TSMC fab in Taiwan's Hsinchu a robot is moving a silicon wafer packed with transistors measuring 2 nanometers — 20 atoms in a row. Mass production of chips using the 2-nanometer process began in late 2025, and TSMC's entire 2026 capacity is already sold out — Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and AMD are all in line. Samsung has launched its own 2-nanometer Exynos 2600 processor. Intel is advancing its 18A node (1.8 nm). We are talking about the kind of density and effi

Russia's mobilization arithmetic. How many can the Kremlin send to war?

When Russia announced a "partial" mobilization in the fall of 2022, its society experienced a genuine shock. The queues at the Upper Lars border crossing into Georgia and the chaotic roundups of reservists are still fresh in public memory. The Russian authorities learned from that episode and shifted tactics toward a more concealed form of mobilization. Several tools were deployed at once: mass recruitment from prisons, sending convicts to the front in exchange for pardons, and aggressive enli