What is Track Ukraine and Why It Matters

Through a conversation with the Ukraine-based journalist Dylan Burns, this article explores how Track Ukraine places the magnifying glass over American politicians, why its founder believes support for Ukraine must remain politically visible, and how the electorate indirectly shapes the war.

For many Americans, the war in Ukraine can too often feel distant, appearing on occasion in the odd headline, social media argument, or dispute over aid packages. Yet for Ukrainians, those same debates can determine whether ammunition arrives, whether air defences hold, and whether cities remain liveable, with Ukraine living on a knife edge more than four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion.

This distance between political choice and human consequence is precisely the space Track Ukraine attempts to close, leaving less space for ignorance in place of accountability.

What is Track Ukraine?

Track Ukraine is a volunteer-run project founded by journalist Dylan Burns. Its purpose is to track where American politicians and candidates stand on support for Ukraine. It does this through a colour-coded system based on voting records, public statements, political behaviour, ambiguity, and shifts over time.^[1]

The project publishes these assessments through its website (www.TrackUkraine.com) and social media platforms, where the rankings can be shared, challenged, and used by voters and campaigners alike. Burns said the team aims to maintain a regular stream of posts/updates, ideally “two to four posts a day,” constantly grading politicians and keeping the issue visible.^[2]

The project is not simply a database. It is an accountability mechanism critical to the sustaining of a healthy democracy. Its deeper purpose is to make the consequences of voting for a particular politician more explicit and harder to ignore. A voter may not follow the minutiae of every procedural vote, amendment, interview, or foreign policy statement. Track Ukraine attempts to condense that record into something visible and usable.

Burns described the project as rooted in social pressure. “We believe in the power of social taboos and social pressure,” he stated confidently during the interview. Abandoning Ukraine to the destruction of its cities, he argued, should become “a massive social taboo.”^[2]

This is an important distinction. Track Ukraine does not treat information as passive. It treats information as something that can alter incentives and shape decisions. A public ranking can become reputational pressure, a form of political currency.

A politician who knows that their ambiguity will be recognised may behave differently from one who expects voters not to notice. In this sense, Track Ukraine tries to make democratic responsibility more visible: if elected officials shape Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, then voters should know what those officials are doing.

The project’s traffic-light colour categories are especially important because they avoid reducing every politician to a simple pro-Ukraine or anti-Ukraine label. Some politicians support Ukraine clearly. Others oppose support openly. But many occupy murkier territory: hesitation, silence, inconsistency, rhetorical support without material commitment, or procedural behaviour that weakens aid while avoiding explicit opposition.

That middle ground matters. Democracies rarely abandon responsibilities all at once. More often, political support erodes through delay, ambiguity, distraction politics, and the gradual normalisation of indifference, with indifference so often coupled with the utterance, “It’s not our problem.”

Most pertinently, history has taught us the power of apathy to forge a path for extremism.

Why should readers trust Track Ukraine?

Track Ukraine is openly motivated by support for Ukraine. It is not neutral in the sense of pretending indifference between aggressor and victim; rather, its neutrality lies in how it treats evidence. A project can have a moral position and still be careful in its claims — the basis of trustworthiness.

One of the most revealing moments in the interview came when I pushed Burns on whether Russia’s actions in Ukraine should be described as genocide. He did not simply adopt the strongest available term. Instead, he was cautious. He said he would not personally use the term unless he was “100 percent certain” and there was a clear consensus among genocide scholars.^[2]

This was not scepticism about Russian brutality. Burns was explicit about ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, russification, child trafficking, and the attempt to erase Ukrainian national identity through violence and coercion. But he distinguished between describing atrocities forcefully and using legal or academic terminology before he felt the threshold of evidence had been met.

That caution gives credibility to his broader approach. In a media environment often shaped by outrage and exaggeration, exactness matters. Burns’ point was that the reality is already horrifying enough without careless inflation of language. “You don’t need to find the academic terminology to inspire outrage,” he argued. “You can channel just what it is to be human and describe this and know that it is wrong.”^[2]

Track Ukraine’s surprising results

One of the more critical aspects of Track Ukraine is that it does not simply function as a partisan scoreboard. Burns strongly criticised sections of the Republican Party for obstructing aid to Ukraine, but he was also clear that Democrats should not be exempt from scrutiny.

This came up in relation to the project’s intermediate categories, especially the yellow category, which captures ambiguity and problematic behaviour short of outright opposition. Burns cited Congressman Vicente Gonzalez as an example of a Democrat whom he believed deserved criticism after meeting sanctioned Russian MPs visiting the United States.^[2]

That example matters because it complicates the usual party-political narrative. Track Ukraine’s value is not only in identifying open opponents of Ukrainian aid. It is also in identifying hesitation, inconsistency and behaviour that undermines support while avoiding clear anti-Ukraine branding. As mentioned prior, this kind of apathy is a critical component in the erosion of reasonableness in politics.

In this sense, some of the project’s most interesting findings are not necessarily the most extreme politicians, but the ambiguous ones. The politician who loudly opposes Ukraine is easy to classify. The more difficult case is the politician who appears supportive in general terms, but acts in ways that weaken the practical position of Ukraine. Track Ukraine makes that ambiguity visible.

Motivations: Moral

Burns’ motivation is clearly rooted in the human reality of the war. When discussing Ukraine, his focus was not in geopolitical abstractions. He returned repeatedly to civilians, soldiers, displacement, exhaustion, and the specific terror of modern drone warfare: the details of Russian viciousness towards Ukrainian civilians.

Burns described the mood in Ukraine as “steely”: “They don’t want the war to continue, but they accept the reality for what it is.” He goes on to describe the Ukrainians as resilient but tired, “The majority of Ukrainians are still defiant... they are still quite resilient,” stating that “,There can’t be hesitation in surviving because that’s the national goal, survival.” ^[2]

Nevertheless, this resilience should not be romanticised into invulnerability. Burns also described visible exhaustion after years of war and another brutal winter. Ukrainians may be defiant, but defiance is not a substitute for ammunition, air defence, sanctions, or sustained political commitment. Ukrainian resilience has been utterly impressive, but they remain human.

The most vivid section of the interview concerned what has become known as the “human safari”: the deliberate hunting of civilians with FPV (first person view) drones. Burns described civilians hiding under trees as drones came in, cities living under the threat of artillery, and the psychological atmosphere of bombardment. For civilians near the front, Burns described artillery range as a threshold of terror. “Once you’re in that artillery range, that’s when the terror really starts.”^[2] There is, he said, “this constant thunder without the storm.”^[2]

His most striking description was of FPV drones themselves: “It’s like you took an improvised explosive device and gave it wings and eyes and then told it to chase people.”^[2]

This is the moral kernel. Track Ukraine matters because the votes and positions it tracks are connected to these realities. Aid delays are not merely procedural disputes. Political hesitation is not merely rhetoric. The level of support Ukraine receives can affect whether civilians remain protected, whether soldiers have the ammunition they need, and whether Russia concludes that it can simply wait out the West.

The moral argument is therefore not abstract. It is grounded in a question: if democratic voters indirectly shape these outcomes, can they claim complete distance from the consequences?

Motivations: Economic and geopolitical

Although Burns’ motivation appears primarily moral and human, there is also a pragmatic case for supporting Ukraine. For the United States, Ukraine is not merely a distant humanitarian issue. It is tied to the credibility of Western deterrence, the stability of Europe, and the question of whether authoritarian states can redraw borders by force without lasting consequences.

The financial cost of supporting Ukraine is substantial, but it should be compared with the possible cost of a wider European security crisis. By early 2026, Ukraine had received about $188 billion in aid from the United States and $197 billion from the European Union.^[3] That figure is significant, but the strategic alternative may be far more expensive: a weakened Ukraine, a more aggressive Russia, increased pressure on NATO’s eastern flank, and a Europe forced into deeper instability.

NATO itself has reinforced its eastern deterrence posture since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, deploying additional ships, aircraft and troops to the eastern part of the Alliance.^[4] This response shows that the war is not isolated from wider European security. If Russia’s aggression succeeds, the burden does not simply disappear. It shifts westward, closer to NATO territory.

From a purely economic standpoint, it is reasonable to ask how much Ukraine’s Western allies might have saved had Ukraine been supplied with stronger deterrent capabilities before Russia’s full-scale invasion, to the point of having deterred Russian aggression. Importantly, a similar question applies today: how much greater will the eventual cost be if Ukraine is left in a state of precariousness now?

This is part of a broader deterrence argument. If Russia can gain territory through invasion and then wait for Western democracies to lose interest, the lesson will not be confined to Ukraine. Other authoritarian powers will be watching whether Western commitments can be exhausted through time, propaganda and domestic political fatigue. Supporting Ukraine is therefore not charity in a vacuum. It is also an investment in deterrence, alliance credibility, and the principle that conquest should not be rewarded.

This does not replace the moral case; it complements it. States often act from mixed motives, and electorates are more likely to sustain support when they understand both the ethical and self-interested reasons for action. Ukraine’s defence is first and foremost a Ukrainian struggle for survival, but it is also part of a larger test of whether democratic alliances can recognise threats before they become more costly.

What can we, as individuals, do for Ukraine?

The interview ended with the practical question of what individuals can do while lawmakers hesitate. Burns’ answer was not glamorous, but it was concrete: contact representatives, make clear where you stand, and create political incentives for continued support.^[2]

This is where Track Ukraine can become useful. It gives voters a tool for identifying where politicians stand, where pressure may be needed, and where rhetoric does not match behaviour. Political accountability requires attention, and attention is easier when information is organised.

Beyond politics, Burns also mentioned grassroots fundraising and Ukrainian voices who continue to raise money and awareness. He referred to Ukrainian Ana, Serhii Sternenko, and Ricky Ukrainian as examples of people who fundraise regularly.

For example Ukrainian Ana (Anastasiya Paraskevova), who was featured in the Kyiv Post,^[5] has raised money for frontline essentials including drones, vehicles, generators, and medical equipment. Additionally, she has raised money for the Dusha Kharkiv charity, helping feed refugees, children, elderly people, and victims of Russian attacks.^[6]Such successful fundraisers represent an overtly positive outcome of individuals sidestepping their governments, uniting, and supporting Ukraine.

For individuals, the options are therefore not limited to passive concern. People can vote with Ukraine in mind. They can contact representatives. They can support credible fundraisers. They can refuse to let the war disappear into the background noise of politics. They can share reliable information, something Track Ukraine makes a simpler task.

Ultimately, Track Ukraine matters because it tries to make distant consequences politically visible. It makes it harder for voters to treat foreign policy as something detached from their own democratic choices. Indeed, the onus of responsibility is shared between the electorate and representative when ignorance can no longer be reasonably excused.

If voters choose politicians who weaken support for Ukraine, that choice has consequences. If they reward politicians who take the issue seriously, that has consequences too. In a healthy democracy, those consequences should be visible.

Burns put the point simply: “People should vote as if their vote matters on the issue.”^[2]

If you appreciate what Track Ukraine is doing, share and follow their website and social media accounts. By doing so you are actively supporting Ukraine. Find them on X.