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Tag: War

“All wars come at the expense of human life. No one thinks about the little man”

Interview with Polina Zherebtsova, a Chechen Russian writer and human rights activist. Interviewer: Karolina Zub-Lewińska.

April 7, 2025 - Karolina Zub-Lewińska Polina Zherebtsova

Ukraine after the war: lessons of resilience

Ukraine’s journey through war and into the complex terrain of post-conflict recovery is a testament to the enduring power of human resilience and institutional determination. The scars of war are undeniably deep, but they also carry with them the seeds of renewal. Ukraine now stands at a pivotal moment in its history – a chance to not just rebuild, but to reimagine its future as a resilient, democratic and adaptive nation.

Following the Russian invasion in February 2022, the wounds inflicted on Ukraine by the invading forces have become eternal. They have shaped the country in a way that has changed all aspects of life, including socio-economic issues alongside politics. The war has also provided valuable insights with regards to the strategies that should be utilized in order to overcome challenges and build a sustainable future. The strategies of adaptation that have emerged as a result of the current, slower period of the conflict demonstrate how these changes are taking place. 

February 28, 2025 - Roksolana Ivanova

The refrigerator and the television. Sanctions as war by other means

Sanctions are always a kind of double-edged sword. In order to be effective and prevent bypassing, they have to be comprehensive and include as many countries as possible. Changing elite behaviour depends on increasing the kind of pressure that pushes parties off the battlefield and to the negotiating table. Sanctions can therefore help to tip the balance.

Sanctions regimes aim to change elite behaviour by raising the costs and stakes of their choices, both directly in terms of diminishing their personal comfort including travel and access to finance, and indirectly by increasing popular pressure against their rule through economic hardship. This highlights one of several problems with sanctions. These elites are usually uninterested in popular welfare, explaining their attitude towards democracy and its wider benefits.

February 28, 2025 - Greg Mills Hryhoriy Nemyria Luis Ravina Ray Hartley

Life on the exhale

Life on the exhale is like knocking on a door, it carries an echo, and wakes up the dormant. People to whom it is written, like Victoria Amelina, transcend what we usually can, and what in Ukrainian is expressed by the word mohty. In truth, Vika, seeking justice, a home and a future, bore witness to the path to victory, in Ukraine's destiny fulfilling itself through pere-mohty, doing more than our strength and imaginings would allow.

The last inhale was Canada, a good job in the IT industry, studying creative writing in the United States, literary residencies in the West, vacations with her family in Egypt, the safety of her son Andriy in Poland. Vika (short for Victoria) crosses the Polish-Ukrainian border on February 26th 2022. In the evening she reaches Lviv, where her mother, a history teacher, lives. As soon as the Kyiv region is liberated, she moves east. On the train to Kyiv, she meets three women writers, as well as activists from the Revolution of Dignity, human rights activists and the journalists Larisa Denysenko, Svetlana Povalayeva and Olena Stiazhkina.

February 28, 2025 - Krzysztof Czyżewski

Ukraine under attack. How to help?

On February 24 2022, the Russian army began a full scale attack against independent and free Ukraine.

February 24, 2025 - New Eastern Europe

How to convey a war: a review of Oleksandr Mykhed’s The Language of War

Ukraine’s continued resistance against Russian aggression is also clear in the field of literature. While many writers now serve in the military, others are making a contribution through their continued engagement with writing. Oleksandr Mykhed’s new book offers a vivid insight into this development that is helping to document the nation’s struggle for freedom.

January 7, 2025 - Nicole Yurcaba

There will be no peace in Europe with Putin in power

A conversation with Borja Lasheras, advisor on Ukraine to Joseph Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Interviewer: Iwona Reichardt

November 22, 2024 - Borja Lasheras Iwona Reichardt

How Russia’s full-scale invasion has accelerated the flooding of Donbas coal mines

Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine has dramatically impacted the areas that used to make up the coal mining industry. Since 2014 most of the mines on the territories of Donbas not controlled by Ukraine have been closed down and many of them subsequently began to flood. If the coal region remains in a state of uncontrolled flooding over the next five to twelve years, then two-thirds of the territory of Donbas will become uninhabitable for normal life.

Despite Russia's full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian government remains committed to its pledge to phase out coal after 2035, the former deputy energy minister, Yaroslav Demchenkov, said in the summer of 2023. By 2021, Ukraine, as well as the country's largest energy company, DTEK, had already joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), an initiative aimed at a phased transition to carbon-free energetics. In addition, during the COP28 climate summit, German Galushchenko, the energy minister, also announced plans to create a “de-carbonized mix of Ukraine's energy system” from renewable energy and nuclear power.

November 21, 2024 - Stanislav Storozhenko

Life on the front: living and surviving in Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine

Scenes of conflict from Ukraine continue to dominate reports concerning the ongoing Russian invasion. Despite this, the war moves at a rather slow pace at the front. This reflects the local population’s adaptation to the conflict, with people stealing small moments of normalcy throughout their day-to-day lives.

On a cool, bluish-green river just minutes from the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, Ukrainian soldiers from a mortar brigade seek to relax. The dark green military 4x4 that brought them from the front now sits idle as they cast fishing lines into the water. The fishing is poor, yielding little more than ripples, but the catch does not matter. For these soldiers, the chance to grill meat, share drinks, and laugh in the open air is worth more than any fish they might pull out. Here, far from the war, time slows, and the simple act of being together in nature becomes a fleeting treasure.

November 21, 2024 - Joshua Kroeker

Gender stereotypes break down as Ukrainian women step up

With one million Ukrainians in the military, including hundreds of thousands on the frontlines, nine million displaced and thousands of men who once eagerly enlisted now hiding from military recruiters, the war shrunk and reshaped Ukraine's labour force. Indeed, it is likely to continue transforming society and women’s place in it for decades to come.

After years as a quality control engineer with big supermarkets and housing construction sites, Natalia Myronenko had yearned for change. Passionate about fashion, beauty, makeup and harmony, she saw her maternity leave after the birth of her second child as the perfect time to pivot. But the war intervened, thrusting her into a field she had never imagined entering: humanitarian demining. When she got the job as a quality control manager, she envisioned mostly office supervisory work. “Then I realized that war is my job, and I was shocked,” says the 40-year-old. Like in her old job, she has to check other people’s work. Only now, human lives are on the line. At stake is making the land safe again for farmers and people to live on, to survey each patch of farmland that had witnessed combat, carefully searching for and removing unexploded mines, missiles, artillery shells, bombs and other types of ordnance – all with the utmost caution. “It’s all about safety,” she says.

November 21, 2024 - Isabelle de Pommereau

Why Baltic security matters

From the perspective of the three Baltic countries, Russia's brutal war in Ukraine has only reinforced the notion that the United States is the key linchpin in the European security order. In the early hours of February 24th 2022, as Russia embarked on levelling Ukrainian cities, Washington called upon the 173rd Airborne Brigade to move swiftly from Italy to Latvia, thus assuring the most exposed Eastern European nations.

September 16, 2024 - Andris Banka

Tug of war. The NATO summit and (not so) modest gains in Washington

NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington took place in the shadow of the most shattering armed conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War. The Russian invasion of Ukraine almost completely consumed these talks, but at the same time nobody would deny that it constituted the most important trigger for NATO’s much accelerated adaptation to the new, harsh geopolitical reality.

September 16, 2024 - Beata Górka-Winter

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