This volume of collected papers takes stock of what has become known about the war in eastern Ukraine’s Donets Basin (Donbas) between April 2014 and mid-2020. It provides an introduction to the ...conflict and illustrates the key point of contention in the academic debate surrounding it—the question whether this war is primarily an internal Ukrainian phenomenon or the result of a covert Russian invasion. The contributions by recognized specialists from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and Japan offer multifaceted views and insights into this long-lasting conflict for both expert readers and those who are new to the topic.
The volume’s contributors are Tymofii Brik, Jakob Hauter, Sanshiro Hosaka, Yuriy Matsiyevsky, Nikolay Mitrokhin, Maximilian Kranich, and Ulrich Schneckener.
Since 1991, nominally independent Ukraine has been in turmoil, with the Orange Revolution and the Maidan protests marking its most critical moments. Now, its borders are threatened and the civil ...unrest and armed conflict continue to destabilise the country. In order to understand these dramatic events, Yuliya Yurchenko looks to the country’s post-Soviet past in this ambitious analysis of contemporary Ukrainian political economy. Providing distinctive and unexplored reflections on the origins of the conflict, Yurchenko unpacks the four central myths that underlie Ukraine's post-Soviet reality: the myth of transition, the myth of democracy, the myth of two Ukraines, and the myth of 'the other'. In doing so, she sheds light on the current intensification of class rivalries in Ukraine, the kleptocracy, resource wars and analyses existing and potential dangers of the rightwing shift in Ukraine's polity, stressing a historic opportunity for change. Critiquing the concept of Ukraine as ‘transition space’, she provides a sweeping analysis which includes the wider neoliberal restructuring of global political economy since the 1970s, with particular focus on Ukraine's relations with the US, the EU and Russia. This is a book for those wanting to understand the current conflict as a dangerous product of neoliberalism, of the empire of capital.
This book is among the first comprehensive efforts to collectively and academically investigate the legacy of the Euromaidan in conflict-torn Ukraine within the domain of civil society broadly ...understood. The contributions to this book identify, describe, conceptualize, and explain various developments in Ukrainian civil society and its role in Ukraine's democratization, state- building, and conflict resolution by looking at specific understudied sectors and by tracing the situation before, during, and after the Euromaidan. In doing so, this trailblazing collection highlights a number of new themes, challenges, and opportunities related to Ukrainian civil society. They include volunteerism, grassroots community-based activism, social activism of churches, civic efforts of building peace and reconciliation, civic activism of journalists and digital activism, activism of think tanks, diaspora networks and the LGBT movement, challenges of civil society relations with the state, uncivil society, and the closing of civic space.
Nationalism, national identity, and ethnicity are complex social phenomena worldwide and especially so in post-Soviet Ukraine. This monograph explores the causes and conditions of post-communist ...nationalist revivals focusing on the re-emergence of Cossack movements in Russia and Ukraine since the late 1980s. The study explores how different theories of nationalist movements underpinned different national policies and, ultimately, different socially constructed realities that led to the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
What are the reasons behind, and trajectories of, the rapid cultural changes in Ukraine since 2013? This volume highlights: the role of the Revolution of Dignity and the Russian-Ukrainian war in the ...formation of Ukrainian civil society; the forms of warfare waged by Moscow against Kyiv, including information and religious wars; Ukrainian and Russian identities and cultural realignment; sources of destabilization in Ukraine and beyond; memory politics and Russian foreign policies; the Kremlin's geopolitical goals in its 'near abroad'; and factors determining Ukraine's future and survival in a state of war. The studies included in this collection illuminate the growing gap between the political and social systems of Ukraine and Russia. The anthology illustrates how the Ukrainian revolution of 2013–2014, Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and its invasion of eastern Ukraine have altered the post-Cold War political landscape and, with it, regional and global power and security dynamics.
To obtain a precise record of the foreshock sequence before the 2014 Iquique, Chile Mw 8.1 earthquake, we applied a matched filter technique to continuous seismograms recorded near the source region. ...We newly detected about 10 times the number of seismic events listed in the routinely constructed earthquake catalog and identified multiple sequences of earthquake migrations at speeds of 2–10 km/d, both along strike and downdip on the fault plane, updip of the main shock area. In addition, we found out repeating earthquakes from the newly detected events, likely indicating aseismic slip along the plate boundary fault during the foreshock sequence. These observations suggest the occurrence of multiple slow‐slip events updip of the main shock area. The final slow‐slip event migrated toward the main shock nucleation point. We interpret that several parts of the plate boundary fault perhaps experienced slow slip, causing stress loading on the prospective largest slip patch of the main shock rupture.
Key Points
Foreshocks migrated both along strike and downdip at rates of 2–10 km/d
Slow‐slip events occurred updip of the largest slip patch of the main shock rupture
Final slow‐slip event migrated to the initiation point of the main shock rupture
We observed 12 Plutinos over two separated years with the 4.3 m Lowell's Discovery Channel Telescope. Here, we present the first light-curve data for those objects. Three of them (2014 JL80, 2014 ...JO80, and 2014 JQ80) display a large light-curve amplitude explainable by a single elongated object, but they are most likely caused by a contact binary system due to their light-curve morphology. These potential contact binaries have rotational periods from 6.3 to 34.9 hr and peak-to-peak light-curve variability between 0.6 and 0.8 mag. We present partial light curves, allowing us to constrain the light-curve amplitude and the rotational period of another nine Plutinos. By merging our data with the literature, we estimate that up to ∼40% of the Plutinos could be contact binaries. Interestingly, we found that all of the suspected contact binaries in the 3:2 resonance are small with absolute magnitude H > 6 mag. Based on our sample and the literature, up to ∼50% of the small Plutinos are potential contact binaries.
The ability to rapidly assess the spatial distribution and severity of building damage is essential to post-event emergency response and recovery. Visually identifying and classifying individual ...building damage requires significant time and personnel resources and can last for months after the event. This article evaluates the feasibility of using machine learning techniques such as discriminant analysis, k-nearest neighbors, decision trees, and random forests, to rapidly predict earthquake-induced building damage. Data from the 2014 South Napa earthquake are used for the study where building damage is classified based on the assigned Applied Technology Council (ATC)-20 tag (red, yellow, and green). Spectral acceleration at a period of 0.3 s, fault distance, and several building specific characteristics (e.g. age, floor area, presence of plan irregularity) are used as features or predictor variables for the machine learning models. A portion of the damage data from the Napa earthquake is used to obtain the forecast model, and the performance of each machine learning technique is evaluated using the remaining (test) data. It is noted that the random forest algorithm can accurately predict the assigned tags for 66% of the buildings in the test dataset.
The EU Regulation No 517/2014 is going to phase-out most of the refrigerants commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning systems (R134a, R404A and R410A) because of their extended use and ...their high GWP values. There are very different options to replace them; however, no refrigerant has yet imposed. In this paper we review and analyze the different mixtures proposed by the AHRI as alternative refrigerants to those employed currently. These mixtures are composed by HFC refrigerants: R32, R125, R152a and R134a; and HFO refrigerants: R1234yf and R1234ze(E). It is concluded, from the theoretical analysis, that most of the new HFO/HFC mixtures perform under the HFC analyzed (although some experimental studies show the contrary) and, in most cases, do not meet the GWP restrictions approved by the European normative. Furthermore, some of the mixtures proposed would have problems due to their flammability.
•We present an analysis of EU Regulation No 517/2014 based on HFO/HFC mixtures.•R134a, R404A and R410A are the baseline refrigerants (they are the most commonly used).•We perform a theoretical comparison between HFC and HFO/HFC mixtures.•Other studies based on HFC substitution by HFO/HFC mixtures are reviewed.•The GWP limitations approved are very restrictive and will suppose a problem.