We Must Not Forget Ukraine's Plight

UPDATE: Since this blogpost was published, I am delighted that our Letter to the Editor was posted online on masslive.com on February 18, 2026. It can be read (one needs to scroll down) on the following link https://www.masslive.com/opinion/2026/02/lets-see-action-on-audit-of-state-legislature-letters-to-the-republican.html

As we approach the 4th anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, it is important to appropriately acknowledge it.

Last week, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney and I had a Letter to the Editor published in the biggest western Massachusetts newspaper: The Springfield Republican. The letter, "We must not forget Ukraine's plight," appeared in the hard copy of this newspaper on February 12, 2026. It has not yet appeared online on masslive.com.

Below I am posting it (apologies for the small print).

We worked diligently on this letter and are grateful that the publisher of The Springfield Republican, Larry Parnass, accepted it.

It has been shared with relatives and also with Razom for Ukraine and the UNWLA (Soyuz Ukrainok), organizations who have been outstanding advocates for support of Ukraine.

And, in my previous post, I provided information on a panel of faculty and exchange students from Ukraine that I organized and that I will moderate, with support from the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2026/02/panel-at-isenberg-school-to-mark-4th.html

Slava Ukraini!

Panel at the Isenberg School to Mark the 4th Anniversary of Russia's Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

On February 27, 2026, a special panel of faculty from Amherst College and UMass Amherst and exchange students from the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) , who recently arrived at UMass Amherst, will take place at the Isenberg School of Management.

The panel was organized to mark the 4th anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Below is the poster designed by this year's President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, Samira Samadi, who is also my PhD student.

The panelists will consist of faculty: Professors Nataliia Bychkova and Myroslav Kryven of Amherst College and my colleague at the Isenberg School - Professor Bogdan Prokopovych as well as the KSE exchange students: Alisa Mikjieieva, Olesia Rozhanska, and Yuliia Zaitseva.

UMass Amherst signed a series of MOUs with KSE, shortly after the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, and, to-date, we have had two cohorts of Virtual Scholars in Ukraine working with faculty at UMass Amherst. The 2023-2024 cohort had 25 Virtual Scholars at various universities in Ukraine and the 2024-2025 consisted of 10 Virtual Scholars, all of whom were "matched" with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management.

And, since 2023, UMass Amherst has welcomed multiple exchange students from KSE. The students on the panel are now taking classes at UMass Amherst. One is majoring in psychology and two in business economics.

The panel, I am sure, will be very timely and informative.

Thrilled that Our Paper on Tariffs and Effects on Labor in Supply Chains is Published Free Access in JORS!

My Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Samira Samadi, and I are thrilled that our paper on ad valorem tariffs and their effects on labor in competitive supply chains is now published in the Journal of Operational Research (JORS). JORS is the flagship journal of the Operational Research Society, which is based in the United Kingdom.

The paper is titled, "Ad Valorem Tariffs in Global Supply Chain Networks and Impacts on Labor." The model is a game theory one of firms competing in an oligopolistic manner, each one seeking to maximize its profits, in the presence of tariffs. The firms seek to determine the optimal production of commodities and their distribution as well as the labor needed, with wages and productivity of labor included.

Illustrative examples are provided along with a global soybean trade case study. Numerical results reveal how such tariffs shift trade flows, reshape labor allocation, and affect demand prices as well as profits, with labor shortages and cost disruptions further negatively compounding the effects.

The Editor in Chief, (EIC) of JORS, Kostas Nikolopoulos of Durham University, has kindly made the paper free access and the link to it is below: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758

With tariffs having wide impacts, both locally and globally, this is one of the very first papers to quantify the effects on labor, trade flows, and profits. We thank the EIC for the expert handling of our paper as well as the anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback on the original paper.