Anait Khoperiia has been appointed acting head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, a decision announced on October 1, 2026, and reported by the NSDC on Facebook. On its own, the appointment reads like a routine administrative notice: a name, a title, a date, a decree. But behind that formal language is a deeply human story of preparation, persistence, and public service during one of the most volatile periods in modern history. Khoperiia is not arriving from outside, parachuted into an unfamiliar institution with a mandate to clean house. She has spent years inside the Center, knows its inner workings, and has helped shape its response to some of the most dangerous information threats Ukraine has faced. Her route to the leadership post is a long arc through law enforcement, government, and even rail transport—each stop adding a layer to her understanding of how institutions work, how corruption and misinformation can erode them, and how essential public trust is to national survival. In a country where disinformation is not an abstract academic concept but a weapon used daily to destabilize, demoralize, and divide, the choice of someone with her background matters. It signals continuity, competence, and a quiet determination to keep fighting the invisible battles that are just as consequential as those fought on the front lines.
Khoperiia’s academic foundation is rooted in law, a discipline that teaches precision, evidence, and the importance of procedures—skills that translate remarkably well into the world of countering false narratives. In 2015, she graduated with honors from the Faculty of Law at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, one of the most prestigious and demanding law programs in the country. That achievement alone would have opened many doors, but she did not stop there. In 2023, she defended her dissertation at the Academician F. H. Burchak Scientific Research Institute of Private Law and Entrepreneurship of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine, earning the degree of Candidate of Legal Sciences, which is roughly equivalent to a Ph.D. in law. This combination of academic rigor and applied experience is not incidental. It speaks to a person who values deep knowledge, who is willing to spend years studying complex systems, and who understands that the fight against disinformation requires more than quick reactions or emotional appeals. It requires a legal and analytical mindset, the ability to distinguish between protected speech, misinformation, propaganda, and criminal acts, and the patience to build cases that hold up under scrutiny. For someone in her position, the law is not a set of obstacles; it is a toolkit for protecting truth and accountability in an environment where lies are engineered at scale.
Her career before the Center is a study in institutional breadth and practical resilience. Khoperiia has held positions at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the Ministry of Justice, the State Tax Service, and JSC Ukrzaliznytsia, the state-owned railway operator. At first glance, those institutions seem to have little in common: anti-corruption law enforcement, judicial policy, tax administration, and rail transport. But as anyone who has worked inside the machinery of the Ukrainian state knows, these are all arenas where public trust is won or lost, where bureaucratic dysfunction can become a national security issue, and where everyday citizens encounter the presence—or absence—of the state in their lives. Working at NABU gave her direct exposure to the fight against systemic graft and the difficulty of holding powerful actors accountable. The Ministry of Justice taught her how legal frameworks are actually implemented, and where they fail. The State Tax Service showed her how economic pressure and informational manipulation can be used to destabilize institutions. And Ukrzaliznytsia, the national railway, is not just a transport company; especially after 2022, it became a lifeline for millions of people fleeing war, a symbol of operational endurance under bombardment, and a target for Russian disinformation designed to sow panic and confusion. To have worked in all those places is to understand the state from many angles at once, to see both its fragility and its capacity, and to appreciate that every institutional weakness is a potential opening for malign influence.
Khoperiia joined the Center for Countering Disinformation in June 2021, just months before the full-scale invasion. That timing is significant. She was there when the Center was still finding its footing, when warnings about Russian information operations were often dismissed or underestimated by international observers. Then the war came, and the Center’s work moved from an abstract concern to a matter of literal life and death. As deputy head and leader of the Department for Countering Information Threats to National Security, she oversaw efforts to identify, analyze, and respond to a relentless stream of falsehoods: fake bomb threats, manipulated videos of military leaders, fabricated reports of capitulation, forged government documents, and the elaborate narratives designed to convince Ukrainians that resistance was hopeless, allies were unreliable, and their own leadership was illegitimate. This is the invisible work of modern warfare, and it requires people who can keep a cool head under extreme pressure, verify facts quickly, coordinate with media and government bodies, and communicate clearly with a frightened population. Her legal training helped her navigate the delicate line between exposing falsehoods and protecting civil liberties, while her institutional experience helped her understand how disinformation flowing through one sector—say, the tax system or the railways—could spiral into broader panic if left unchecked. This was not a learning-on-the-job moment; she had already spent years preparing for exactly this kind of challenge.
The announcement of her appointment also carries a quiet historical note. On September 28, 2026, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the Center’s previous head, Andriy Kovalenko, by decree. The reasons for that dismissal have not been elaborated publicly, and the official language is spare. But in a democracy, leadership changes depend on institutional discipline and the ability of a team to continue functioning even as its head changes. What matters is that the Center did not stand still. Within days, a successor was named, and that successor was not an outsider but someone who had spent years inside the institution, learning its rhythms, earning the trust of colleagues, and proving herself under fire. That is the human dimension of governance: people who work in the shadows, who do not dominate headlines, but whose steady competence allows the state to carry on when the spotlight shifts. It would be easy to imagine Khoperiia as a purely technical official, a career bureaucrat navigating the system. But the reality is more complex and more human. She is stepping into a role that demands judgment, emotional resilience, and the ability to stay calm while the world is flooded with lies. She has been in that maelstrom for years. She knows what it feels like to read a viral piece of disinformation and know that lives depend on how swiftly and effectively the response comes. She has likely had sleepless nights, difficult meetings, and moments of doubt. That is exactly what makes her the right person for the job.
In the end, the appointment of Anait Khoperiia is both a personnel decision and a statement of priorities. It says that Ukraine’s national security apparatus recognizes the centrality of the information front and is entrusting it to someone with deep, relevant experience rather than political connections or symbolic gestures. It reflects the broader truth that countering disinformation is not a side project or a temporary campaign; it is a permanent structural responsibility, requiring institutions that are both knowledgeable and resilient. Khoperiia’s background—from an honors degree in law to a doctoral dissertation, from anti-corruption work to tax oversight, from the railways to the command center of the fight against falsehood—paints a portrait of a public servant who has seen the state from every angle and still believes it can be made to work. Her task is enormous: to protect Ukrainian decision-making from manipulation, to strengthen public trust in reliable information, and to help her country survive and thrive in an age of hybrid warfare. But she is not starting from zero. She has the tools, the knowledge, and the scars. The Center she now leads is a product of years of effort, trial, error, and adaptation, and it is being placed in the hands of someone who helped build it. That is cause for cautious confidence, not because the war is ending or the disinformation will stop, but because the right people are still showing up to fight. In wartime, that human willingness to take responsibility, even when the road ahead is uncertain, is one of the most powerful forces a nation can have.