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.

The world is darkened by Russia´s terrifying and tragic war against Ukraine. The Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) together with the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and the Embassy of Ukraine in Sweden hosted a fundraising event and discussion on how to provide intellectual and humanitarian support to faculty members, researchers, and students working within and outside Ukraine’s borders.

In recent decades, a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. What do we know about these "Spin Dictators"?

In a recently published op-ed, Torbjörn Becker, Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, discusses why Russia must be forced to pay a higher price for its war in Ukraine. Sanctions should be directed at oil and gas exports, and it is also time to increase the pressure on the banking system. Frozen Russian assets in the West could later become a good basis for Ukraine's reconstruction.

Former Swedish ambassador to Moscow and the OSCE Veronika Bard declares the OSCE project dead, calls for a Swedish-Russia strategy and warns against underestimating the Kremlin's political leadership.

At SSE research center SITE, the war in Ukraine has not just hit close to home for research assistant Hanna Anisimova. It is literally devastating her hometown of Donetsk and threatening the lives of friends and family. But also creating rifts between them.

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.