This event is online only.
Please join the Harriman Institute and the Ukrainian Studies Program at New York University for the fourth session of the series “Ukraine in Focus,” featuring Jane Lytvynenko. Moderated by Anastasiia Vlasenko.
Ukraine in Focus is a public webinar series on war, society, and politics in contemporary Ukraine, co-sponsored by the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. Twelve sessions across the 2026–2027 academic year pair an invited speaker with a faculty moderator, followed by open audience questions. Sessions are scheduled at midday Eastern, evening in Kyiv, so that speakers based in Ukraine can take part live. Moderated by Anastasiia Vlasenko, Visiting Assistant Professor in Ukrainian Studies at NYU. See the full schedule.
Russia’s war against Ukraine is fought not only on the battlefield but also in the information space: on social media, in news feeds, and in the stories that audiences around the world come to believe about the war. Propaganda and disinformation shape how Ukrainians understand events at home, how Russians see the war, and how voters and policymakers abroad decide whether to support Ukraine.
Journalist Jane Lytvynenko, who has spent years investigating online disinformation, will examine how these campaigns work, who runs them, and how they spread across platforms and borders. She will discuss how Ukraine, journalists, researchers, and technology companies have responded, what has worked, and what the information war over Ukraine reveals about the challenges facing democracies everywhere.
The talk will be followed by a conversation and audience Q&A.
Jane Lytvynenko is a journalist at NBC News who specializes in investigating online disinformation. She was previously a senior research fellow with the Technology and Social Change Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, where she developed and taught a curriculum for newsrooms on investigating disinformation, and a senior reporter on the technology team at BuzzFeed News, where she covered disinformation and its impact on politics and society. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she has trained journalists around the world in digital investigation methods.
