- Pritzker Fellows
- Current Fellows
- Dasha Zarivna
Dasha Zarivna
Former Advisor on Communications to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine
Biography
Dasha Zarivna is a Ukrainian political advisor with experience in international affairs, strategic communications, and coordination of policy-related processes. She served as Senior Advisor in the Office of the President of Ukraine, where she supported international outreach, multilateral engagement, and communication activities connected to major international projects. As part of her work, she participated in the coordination of several international working groups, including:
- International Sanctions Group
- Security Guarantees Group
- OECD Accession Working Group
- Grain from Ukraine Initiative
- High-Level Working Group on the Environmental Consequences of the War
- Peace Formula working tracks
Her responsibilities included supporting the preparation of policy briefs, communiqués, legal notes, high-level statements, and other materials, as well as maintaining communication with partner governments, institutions, and think tanks. She also contributed to processes related to Ukraine’s Peace Formula, assisting political, diplomatic, and communication tracks and participating in multilateral consultations. In addition, she was involved in organizing National Security Advisors’ meetings in Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Malta, Switzerland, and Kyiv, and supported preparations for the Global Peace Summit in Switzerland.
From May 2023 to September 2025, Ms. Zarivna served as Chief Operating Officer of the presidential initiative Bring Kids Back UA, coordinating activities related to child deportation issues, international justice processes, humanitarian diplomacy, and global advocacy. She delivered remarks at international platforms, including at the United Nations Security Council.
Earlier, she worked as Senior Advisor at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, where she contributed to communication processes, interagency coordination, and preparation of messaging and materials for international engagement. In the private sector, Ms. Zarivna founded and led Vector Strategic Communications Agency and Vector Media, working in strategic communications, public affairs, and media development.
Seminars
"Diplomacy in the Shadow of an Ongoing War"
Meet Dariia Zarivna, a Ukrainian political advisor who has worked at the center of Ukraine’s international engagement. Serving as Senior Advisor in the Office of the President of Ukraine, she was directly involved in multilateral efforts ranging from international sanctions and security guarantees to environmental consequences of the war and Ukraine’s Peace Formula.
Dariia will tell the story of the Fourth Ukrainian Republic through the lens of her personal history and hope. Drawing on firsthand experience coordinating international working groups, she'll offer a behind-the-scenes look at how multifaceted cooperation is engineered in wartime. She offers a unique lens to examine how civil society agility and military determination have fused into national resilience and how the diplomatic agenda has expanded to include critical challenges – ranging from urgent defense issues to complex humanitarian missions.
The discussion will cover the full spectrum of these efforts: from the fight for the return of abducted children to high-stakes geopolitical alignment via a series of National Security Advisors’ meetings, the Global Peace Summit and more. We'll navigate through stages of forming a strategic framework defining the principles of true peace, as well as practical mechanisms to engage diverse global actors.
Participants will explore how diplomacy, strategic communication and humanitarian advocacy intersect, how alignment is negotiated when total consensus is rarely guaranteed and how progress relies on intense interaction and strategic tradeoffs - offering an unfiltered view of how international policy is shaped when the stakes are existential.
Seminars are off the record and open to current UChicago students only.
What is Ukraine, and what is it all about? And why does Russia want to “eat” it so badly? Let’s discuss the roots of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Why does Putin love stories about the Polovtsy and Pechenegs so much? It's simple: he is a typical Soviet man educated in a typical Soviet school. Orwell captured this perfectly: whoever controls the present controls the past; whoever controls the past controls the future. We will examine how historical narratives are weaponized in modern conflict and why the struggle for Ukrainian independence is fundamentally a clash over who owns the past to define the future.
Joining us for this conversation is special guest Borys Lozhkin, the first Head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine after the onset of Russian aggression in 2014, taking the role at a deeply challenging moment of war and political upheaval. A prominent media entrepreneur, before entering public service he built one of the largest media businesses in Eastern Europe. He was actively involved in supporting Ukraine’s post–Revolution of Dignity reform agenda and remains active in philanthropic initiatives supporting social development.
Special Guest (via Zoom): Borys Lozhkin, former Head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine
What defines the modern Ukrainian army? Case study: Khartiia Brigade. We'll analyze how the adoption of business approaches to management and logistics, the integration of civilian volunteers and horizontal leadership structures have reshaped military doctrine, moving Ukraine away from Soviet legacies toward a more agile, modern force.
Special Guests (via Zoom): Colonel Ihor Obolienskyi, Commander of the 2nd Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine “Khartiia” and Major Oleksii Krymeniuk, Chief Fire Coordination Cell of the 2nd Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine “Khartiia”
What is happening in the negotiations right now? What do security guarantees for Ukraine look like in practice, absent NATO membership? What does a peace accord with Russia mean for the future of Europe, and what precedents could it set? This session will dissect the technical realities of these potential agreements, analyzing the fine print that distinguishes a durable peace from a mere pause in aggression.
Special Guest (via Zoom): Oleksandr Bevz, Advisor to the Head of the Presidential Office & Member of the Negotiation Team
Will there be elections in Ukraine under wartime conditions? In wartime, the preservation of democratic institutions and procedures is as crucial as preserving national unity. Turning this contradiction into an advantage may seem unlikely, but it's the only way to prevail. We'll examine how civil society acts as a check on power when traditional electoral mechanisms are legally suspended.
Volunteer networks are a defining feature of Ukraine’s war effort, including their strengths, risks and long-term implications. Via the case study of Come Back Alive, we'll look inside the fundamental phenomenon of the "crowdfunded war" often remains out of the spotlight, overshadowed by its effects (the drone revolution, government-society interaction reshaping and humanitarian policy changes, to name a few). We'll address this substitution of state functions by NGOs. Is this a temporary emergency measure or a permanent shift in Ukrainian governance?
Let’s unpack one of the most the painful and under-appreciated aspects of the war in Ukraine: the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. What have been the international efforts to secure their return and the legal and moral stakes involved? The deportations are not just a humanitarian crisis but a calculated component of genocide designed to erase national identity. This session examines the major failure of international legal mechanisms and strategies to fix it.
We'll broaden our collective scope to understand how the outcome of this war impacts security architectures in the Indo-Pacific and the global order, moving the conversation beyond the traditional Euro-Atlantic view.
This will be a final assessment of Ukraine’s military, political and societal condition at this stage of the war and the strategic choices ahead. This concluding session will synthesize the military and political realities of the moment to map the trajectory of Ukraine's reconstruction and future sovereignty.