This collective work analyzes the ongoing conflict in Ukraine,
providing a coherent picture of Ukraine and Eastern Europe in the
period 2013-2020. Giving voice to different social groups,
scholarly ...communities and agencies relevant to Ukraine's recent
history, The War in Ukraine's Donbas goes beyond
simplistic media interpretations that limit the analysis to
Vladimir Putin and Russian aims to annex Ukraine. Instead, the
authors identify the deeper roots linked to the autonomy and
history of Donbas as a region. The contributions explore local
society and traditions and the alienation from Ukraine caused by
the events of Euromaidan, which saw the removal of the
Donetsk-based president Viktor Yanukovych. Other chapters address
the refugee crisis, the Minsk Accords in 2014 and the impact of the
new president Volodymyr Zelensky and his efforts to bring the war
to an end by negotiations among Russia, Ukraine, France, and
Germany.
The book concludes with four proposals for a durable peace in
Donbas: territorial power-sharing; the conversion of rebels into
legitimate political parties; amnesty for all participants of the
armed conflict; and a transitional period of several years until
political institutions are fully re-established.
Debating the War in Ukraine discusses whether the war could have been avoided, and, if so, how? In this dialogical book, the authors discuss nodal points of history in terms of counterfactuals and ...contrastive explanations, concluding by considering future possibilities. They start in the 1990s where several causal elements of the war originate involving Russia’s economic developments and Europe’s security arrangements. Moving on to the next decade, they focus on the Iraq war, colour revolutions, and NATO’s 2008 announcement that Ukraine and Georgia will become members. Finally, they explore the past decade including the Ukrainian crisis of 2013–2014, the annexation of Crimea, and the consecutive war in east Ukraine. The current war can also be seen as a continuum of that war. The authors agree that NATO’s 2008 announcement on Ukraine’s and Georgia’s NATO membership was an unnecessary provocation, and that the implementation of the Minsk agreement could have prevented the current war, but otherwise their analysis of counterfactual possibilities differs, especially when it comes to the action-possibilities of the West (including diverse actors). These differences are not just dependent on different readings of relevant evidence but, importantly, stem from dissimilar contrast spaces and divergent theoretical understandings of the nature of states and mechanisms of international relations and political economy. This short, highly accessible book will be of great interest to all those studying and working in international relations and its various subfields such as peace and conflict studies and security studies, as well as all those wishing to understand more about the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. The Open Access version of this book was funded by University of Helsinki Library.
Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 marked a watershed in post-Cold War European history and brought East-West relations to a low. At the same time, by selling this fateful action in starkly ...nationalist language, the Putin regime achieved record-high popularity.
This book shows how, after the large-scale 2011-2013 anti-Putin demonstrations in major Russian cities and the parallel rise in xenophobia related to the Kremlin's perceived inability to deal with the influx of Central Asian labour migrants, the annexation of Crimea generated strong 'rallying around the nation' and 'rallying around the leader' effects.
The contributors to this collection go beyond the news headlines to focus on overlooked aspects of Russian society such as intellectual racism and growing xenophobia. These developments are contextualised with an overview of Russian nationalism: state-led, grassroots and the tensions between the two.
This book provides a systematic analysis of the Russian-Ukraine war, using the concept of resilient fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides during the first year of the ...full-scale invasion. The Russian war in Ukraine began in 2014 and continued for eight years, before the full-scale invasion of 24 February 2022. It is not a new war, but the intensity of the warfighting revived many discussions about the conduct of inter-state warfare, which has not been seen in Europe for decades. This book does not aim to offer an exhaustive operational analysis of the war, but rather provides a preliminary systematic analysis across various domains of warfare using the concept of fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides. First, the book discusses the conceptual component and the post-Cold War adaptations of the Soviet strategic tradition by both the Ukrainian and the Russian Armed Forces. Following that, it gives an evaluation of the various aspects of warfighting in the land, air, maritime and cyber domains. Then, the book examines the role of international allied assistance, sanctions and weapons delivery in strengthening the resilience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The book concludes with some comments on the role of inter-state warfare in the current strategic environment and future warfare. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, foreign policy, Russian studies and international relations.
Aside from the near-complete devastation of a sovereign state and reversal of the global balance of power, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is leading to a radical transformation in the ...Eastern European and Eurasian regions – including Russia itself. The 12 chapters in this volume examine the main geopolitical consequences of the resurgent imperialist aspirations of the Russian Federation. They examine the ideological tools of history falsification as an integral part of hybrid warfare. Turning to the economy, the book discusses how the war and economic sanctions imposed on Russia are redrawing the geopolitical map and how economic relations would change following a regime transformation. The book discusses the reactions of members of the international community to the invasion, whether threatened or neutral parties or allies. The collection therefore offers a comprehensive picture of the main consequences of the resurgent imperialist aspirations of the Russian Federation. Equipped with the conceptual tools of the analysis with a focus on the patronal features of the political-economic system, the book considers the aftermath of the war. This collection complements the book entitled Ukraine. Patronal Democracy and the Russian Invasion.
This volume examines Russia’s war on Ukraine. Scholars who have lived through the Russian invasion or who have conducted ethnographic research in the region for decades provide timely analysis of a ...war that will leave a lasting mark on the twenty-first century. Using the concept of dispossession, this volume showcases some of the novel ways violence operates in the Russian-Ukrainian war and the multiple means by which civilians, within the conflict zone and beyond, have become active participants in the war effort. Anthropological perspectives on war provide on-the-ground insight, historically informed analysis, and theoretical engagement to depict the experiences of dispossession by war and the motivations that drive the responses of the dispossessed. Such perspectives humanize the victims even as they depict the very inhumanity of war. Dispossession is geared towards upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and the general reader who seeks to have a deeper understanding of the Russian-Ukrainian war as it continues to impact geopolitics more broadly.
The book establishes marriage as a pervasive idiom for the construction of collective identity in Syria, which is appropriated by individuals, sects, states and intergovernmental organizations alike. ...Its conclusions are relevant to scholars of Middle East studies, sectarianism, anthropology and politics.”
Exploring the ways in which language and conflict are intertwined and interrelated, this book examines the changes that have taken place in the public discourse of the Ukraine and Russia since 2014 ...and the beginning of the 'Ukrainian Crisis.’ Through analysis of the narratives constructed by different social groups in Ukraine, Discourses of the Ukrainian Crisis shows how discourse can illuminate the competing worldviews and the conflicting positions of the various stakeholders in this conflict. Through critical discourse analysis and multimodality, this book explores the prevalent narratives and the linguistic features of the salient discourses surrounding this conflict. Using Russian- and Ukrainian-language texts from traditional and social media, contributors from Ukraine, Russia and outside investigate discourses surrounding the most important topics of the crisis: its causes and goals, the sides, and the values and ideologies of the opposing parties. Highlighting the ways in which the stress produced by social discord, economic hardship and violence, is reflected in verbal aggression, slurs, insults and profane language of extraordinary linguistic creativity, Discourses of the Ukrainian Crisis provides insight into the ways people think about, respond to and experience the reality of conflict in their everyday communication.
An in-depth look at Ukraine's attempts to shape how it is perceived by the rest of the world.During times of crisis, competing narratives are often advanced to define what is happening, and the ...stakes of information management by nations are high. In this timely book, Göran Bolin and Per Ståhlberg examine the fraught intersection of state politics, corporate business, and civil activism to understand the dynamics and importance of meaning management in Ukraine. Drawing on fieldwork inside the country, the authors discuss the forms, agents, and platforms within the complex political and communicative situation and how each articulated and acted upon perceptions of the propaganda threat.Bolin and Ståhlberg focus their analysis on the period between 2013 and 2022, when political tensions, commercial dynamics, and new communication technologies bred novel forms of information management. As they show, entities from governments and governmental administration to commercial actors, entrepreneurs, and activists formed new alliances in order to claim a stake in information policy. Bolin and Ståhlberg also explore how the various agents engaged in information management and strove to manage meaning in communication practice; the communicative tools they took advantage of; and the subsequent consequences for narrative constructions.
