Professional Affiliation

Policy Researcher, RAND

Expert Bio

Khrystyna Holynska is a 2026-2027 Wilson Center Research Fellow.

Holynska is a policy researcher at RAND. Her research focuses on great power competition, foreign information manipulation and interference, and lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine. She is also an Associate Professor at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), Ukraine. Prior to joining RAND, Holynska led KSE StratBase, a defense and security policy research startup, and served as a professor of public policy and governance at KSE. She was also a strategic analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, where her work focused on Russia’s coercive behavior, deterrence, nonproliferation, the future of NATO, and geodynamics. From October 2022 to February 2023, she was a Research Associate at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In October 2023, she participated in the New Security Leaders Program of the Warsaw Security Forum. 

Holynska holds a Ph.D. in policy analysis from the RAND School of Public Policy, a Ph.D. in political science from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and an M.B.A. and M.B.A.I. in business, artificial intelligence, and data analytics from KSE.

Wilson Center Project

Resilience as Deterrence During Conflict: Lessons from Ukraine for Transatlantic Security

Project Summary

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has brought renewed attention to how nuclear-armed states use coercive nuclear signaling during active conflict and how democratic governments respond under pressure. This research project examines Ukraine’s experience to understand when and why nuclear threats fall short of their intended political effects. It argues that resilience, as the ability to adapt and sustain political decision-making, can limit the leverage an adversary seeks through nuclear coercion. By tracing how Ukraine navigated repeated threats and still crossed Russia’s declared “red lines,” the research project identifies the mechanisms through which resilience can serve as a form of deterrence during conflict and inform U.S. strategy at a moment when Washington and its allies are reassessing how to structure deterrence commitments and design security architecture for future crises.