The Ukrainian Parliament after four years of war - Dr Sarah Whitmore
24 Feb 2026
On the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Dr Sarah Whitmore spoke to us about how the Ukrainian Parliament has functioned under wartime conditions.
6:00pm-7:30pm on Tuesday 24 February 2026 at the Houses of Parliament, Westminster
Sarah is renowned for her research on the Ukrainian legislature, since long before the Russian invasion brought the country to global attention. Her article for the Hansard Society shortly after the invasion in 2022, Finding grace under pressure?, was followed by another on the first anniversary, Ukraine’s Parliament: One year at war.
Sarah brought us up to date on how the Parliament of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada, has operated in such extreme circumstances and with the further challenge of tackling corruption.
Dr Sarah Whitmore is Associate Professor in Politics at Oxford Brookes University. Long before Ukraine came to dominate the news, she was inspired to specialise in Ukrainian politics by her time living in Kyiv.
Sarah was an English teacher in the 1990s at School 254, Borshchahivka, Ukraine, at the Institute of Fisheries and the International Management Institute. She then completed her MA, PhD and ESRC postdoc at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. Sarah is the author of State-Building in Ukraine: The Ukrainian Parliament and of many peer-reviewed journal articles on Russian and Ukrainian parliamentary politics. She has provided consultancy on Ukrainian domestic politics for UK Government departments and the US Department of State, as well as commentary for a wide range of media. She has two current research projects: one with Professor Bettina Renz, University of Nottingham, on “What sort of military does Ukraine want and need?” (funded by the British Academy); and on how the Verkhovna Rada has been functioning during the full-scale invasion.
