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Daniel Shapiro

PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-shapiro-642483bb/

YGLN Membership United States

Daniel Shapiro is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies alliance dynamics and smaller state strategies in periods of great power conflict, focusing mainly on the former Soviet Union. Daniel attended Brown University as an undergraduate, receiving bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Slavic Studies in 2018. He then received a master’s degree in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia from Harvard University in 2020.

Daniel has worked for Harvard Kennedy School’s Russia Matters Project and the European Leadership Network. He was a Fellow at the Stanford US-Russia Forum, and lived in Yerevan, Armenia on a Fulbright research grant in 2021. Daniel has published research on U.S.-Russian relations, the Caucasus, and Ukraine, among other subjects. In addition to his graduate research, he is currently on the executive committee of the ELN’s Younger Generation Leaders’ Network on Euro-Atlantic Security.

Content by Daniel Shapiro

Commentary

The US-Ukraine mineral resources agreement as a signpost in Eurasia’s emerging resource realignment

The recent mineral resources agreement between the US and Ukraine is more than just an isolated bilateral deal – it is part of a broader pattern unfolding across Eurasia as Western powers ramp up efforts to secure alternative sources of strategic raw materials in competition with China and Russia. Nikita Gryazin and Daniel Shapiro write that if the West hopes to offer a viable, sustainable alternative to the China-Russia axis, it must begin acting not as a set of competing actors but as a coordinated front.

3 July 2025 | Nikita Gryazin and Daniel Shapiro
Russia-West relations
Policy brief

Year two of the invasion: Where do former Soviet countries stand?

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, governments in the former Soviet Union were immediately forced to deal with difficult geopolitical realities. In this report for the ELN, YGLN member Daniel Shapiro uses quantitative and qualitative analysis to show there is increased heterogeneity in geopolitical positioning among post-Soviet states and offers key lessons from this for Western policymakers.

4 July 2023 | Daniel Shapiro
Euro-Atlantic Security
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