External, non-governmental resistance in relation to interstate war: an analytical framework

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Russian war against Ukraine in February 2022, unleashed an unprecedented wave of non-governmental, external resistance directed against Russia. In many ways, previous literature on war and resistance does not capture the characteristics of this phenomenon. Besides noting the presence of civilian war protests outside of the warzone, most research has focused on internal resistance during war. In this article, we draw on a wider array of resistance literature and present an analytical framework that allows us to capture the broad elements of non-governmental, external resistance during war – including the power-resistance nexus at work. The analytical framework sorts the various kinds of resisters, it categorises the form of resistance and the targets pursued. The usefulness of the analytical framework is demonstrated through an exploration of empirical examples and illustrations drawn from media reports gathered during the first 10 days of the war in Ukraine. It is concluded that new analytical tools are necessary in order to capture non-governmental, external resistance during war as it is waged in Europe in the 2020s.