The Far Right in Ukraine During the 'Euromaidan' and the War in Donbas

This article explores Pride politics in post-Maidan Ukraine from queer feminist and decolonial perspectives. It aims to understand how the location of Ukraine on the fringes of two imperial formations, namely the global West and Russian imperialism, shapes Pride and its consequences for LGBT communities and broader society. The authors introduce the concept of buffer periphery as an analytic lens that focuses critically on both imperial formations simultaneously, while tracing naturalized colonial discourses. The first part of the article analyzes the material-symbolic framing of Kyiv Pride marches in the context of the NGO-ization of LGBT activism, police reform, the war in Donbas, and the corresponding militarization of Ukrainian society and the region at large. The analysis is focused on how West-centered geopolitics of liberation and the Euro-oriented aspirations of the Ukrainian government work together to animate Pride politics and instrumentalize them. The second part closely examines the case of the Queer Anarcho-Feminist Block at the 2017 Kyiv Pride, considering it an attempt decolonial resistance to neoliberalization and militarization of Pride and LGBT politics in Ukraine. The article suggests that the resulting outcome of Kyiv Pride marches with respect to broader LGBT communities in Ukraine is rather ambiguous. While acknowledging its influence on public opinion and media discourse as well as its personal significance for many community members, the authors offer a critical perspective on Kyiv Pride as a vehicle and an effect of the colonial geopolitics of liberation. It remains unclear to what extent Kyiv Pride challenged homophobia and transphobia, let alone capitalist and racist regimes of power, or if it perhaps just converted the idea of LGBT liberation into a homocapitalist project of producing loyal sexual citizens.

The 'Snipers' Massacre' on the Maidan in Ukraine

This chapter analyses the causes of the Ukrainian Army's defeat in August 2014. The prevailing narrative in the West, as well as in Ukraine, is that in mid-August 2014 the Ukrainian Army was on the verge of complete victory over the rebels, and that it was only because the Russian Army then invaded Ukraine that military disaster instead ensued. The chapter shows that other factors also played an important role in undermining the Ukrainian war effort. In addition to Russian support to the rebels, the chapter examines these factors, namely: the rebels use of interior lines of operations; superior rebel morale; and tactical and strategic mistakes by the Ukrainian Army. In the war in Donbass, the rebels enjoyed the advantage of interior lines. The focus on Russia's role in the war in Donbass has deflected attention from other equally important causes of Ukraine's defeat. The most important of them was probably the mistakes by Ukraine's political and military leaders.

This chapter reviews how historical memory and historical policy are used as tools in the information war in the Donbas conflict. Historical memory is regarded as part of a complex set of collective representations and oral traditions, which form a national identity. Within the hybrid aggression on the territory of Ukraine, the use of narratives provides the background that enables the continuation of the conflict. While Ukraine is re-establishing a Ukraine-centric (nation-centric) policy, the leaders of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” (“DPR”) and “Luhansk People’s Republic” (“LPR”) are trying to use historical memory and dominant narratives found among the population in Donbas to form a new identity. Therefore, the authors analyse what methods are being used by the Russian aggressors and what consequences are possible in the case of the formation of a new identity in Donbas. Methods of information propaganda, such as creating new holidays, new heroes and new approaches to schooling, are considered in detail. Furthermore, attempts to use the events and heroes of the Second World War are similarly analysed, while tangible narratives, such as Soviet symbols and “The Great Patriotic War”, are also considered. Lastly, the development of a new Ukrainian historical policy in response to the historical propaganda challenges of the de-communization law, renaming cities and streets and deconstructing monuments, are evidence of the implementation of a nation-centric paradigm of historical discourse within Ukrainian society. As such, it is believed that the Ukrainian nation-centric paradigm of historical discourse will contribute to the process of nation-building and the strengthening of state institutions and society.

ABSTRACTUkraine previously experienced significant regional political divisions, including separatism in Crimea and Donbas. However, in contrast to post-communist countries such as Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and former Yugoslavia, prior to 2014 Ukraine was able to avoid a war and a break-up. This study examines the role of separatists, the Yanukovych government, the Maidan opposition and the Maidan government, far-right organizations, Russia, the US, and the EU in the conflict in Donbas. It uses a specially commissioned survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2014 to analyse public support for separatism in Donbas, compared to other regions of Ukraine, and the major factors which affect such support. It concludes that all these actors contributed in various ways to the conflict in Donbas, which involved both a civil war and a direct Russian military intervention since August 2014. The study links this conflict to the ‘Euromaidan’, specifically, the government overthrow by means of the Maidan massacre, and the secession and Russia's annexation of Crimea. The KIIS survey shows that support for separatism is much stronger in Donbas compared to other regions, with the exception of Crimea, and that the break-up of Ukraine is unlikely to extend to its other parts.

The author of the article examines the phenomenon of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Donbas, the main trends in its development and resolution, the strategies of the parties in this process as well as miscalculations and achievements of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s diplomacy in gaining peace in Donbas and ending the war with Russia. The author underscores that the Russian-Ukrainian war in Donbas is not only the most acute all-Ukrainian problem but also a sore international issue, which calls into question the existence and survival of the Ukrainian state, the future of European security and the current world order. Seven years into the war, which is officially referred to as the ‘Russian-Ukrainian conflict’, no answer has been found on how to end it. The issues of ending the war against Russia, reimbursing the losses caused by it, establishing peace in Donbas, and returning the occupied territories of Ukraine are the most significant in the foreign policy of President of Ukraine V. Zelenskyy. Yet, the diplomatic strategy he chose has not so far provided the definitive answer to this question, whose solution is expected by Ukrainian citizens both in the liberated and Russian-occupied territories of Donbas. The international community, including its security organisations, does not have a clear and unambiguous answer to this question as well. This article is a certain attempt to analyse the efforts of V. Zelenskyy’s diplomacy to resolve this security problem over the last two years of his presidency. According to the author, the search for alternative ways to achieve peace has not brought the desired results this year. Therefore, Ukraine has only one choice – to recognise the Russian-Ukrainian war as a reality and to be ready for Russia’s large-scale military aggression at any moment. Keywords: Russian-Ukrainian conflict, diplomacy, Normandy format, Minsk process, ‘Yermak plan’, election, strategies of the parties, war, peace, ‘Steinmeier formula’.

The War in Donbas was in its early phases largely fought between non-state volunteer battalions and separatist forces. Yet unlike the expected theories of non-state actors, the war witnessed limited and symmetrical acts of escalation and rather conventional warfare. Building on primary Ukrainian sources, I argue that this limited escalation stems in part from shared cultural and military norms — a common normative framework — possessed by the belligerents. The contribution of this article is an empirical chronology of the War in Donbas, as well as a discussion of the influence of culture and norms in escalatory dynamics and use of force.

The paper explicates the hard-won unity of Ukrainian national identity. Contrary to the concerted determination that Ukrainians displayed in the war with Russia, Ukrainians national identity was fragmented in most of its post-independent history. It reviewed a wide range of polls, surveys, and literature in history and Ukrainian politics with special focus on the different critical moments of identity change in post-independent Ukraine. The paper found that Ukrainians and Russophones living in this country used to have divergent national imaginations from Ukraines independence to the Euromaidan revolution in 2014. However, Russias assertive policy to Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea and support to the Civil War in Donbas since 2014, drove Ukrainians of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds to gradually put down their divisions and unify again as a nation-state. The identity unification finally completed in the Russo-Ukrainian war that Ukrainian became the predominant national identity of all groups in this country.

The existing literature explains the war in Donbas and the rationale for why conflict broke out there while failing to do so in other Ukrainian provinces, such as Odesa or Kharkiv. Local pro-Russian organizations could not attract considerable attention and support in the pre-war period in all parts of Ukraine, except for Crimea. The social marginalization and negligible influence of the pro-Russian organizations among the locals presumably stemmed from their weak social ties among the local population. The question is why they had such weak social embeddedness in the local societies despite relatively popular pro-Russian sympathies in these regions? Surprisingly, nobody has sought to explain the social origins of the pro-Russian movements as a source of their weakness and failure to be sparked by the anti-Ukrainian rebellion in 2014.

The study analyzes the level of national identity of Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine within certain time frames, namely before and after the events of the Revolution of Dignity 2013-2014. The issue of national identity in Ukraine has been studied since independence, and the events of 2014 related to Euromaidan, the occupation of Crimea and the war in Donbas have become an additional catalyst for studying the creation and change of national identity in Ukrainian society. One of the most important aspects of studying the identity of Ukrainians is the analysis of the identity of Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine, who are an integral part of Ukrainian society and on which Russian propaganda, pro-Russian politicians and organizations in Ukraine worked purposefully. But the events that began in 2014 in Ukraine could have an even more significant impact on Russian-speaking citizens and therefore it is important to analyze this impact on the identity of Russian-speaking citizens, because certain changes in national identity in this group affect the political and social life of Ukraine. Sociological monitoring data from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) were used for the analysis. Sociological results published by the institute in free access were analyzed through the method of descriptive statistics. For the analysis, three indicators were selected that are relevant for determining the national identity of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine. Among them: “attitude to the independence of Ukraine”, “interpretation of one's own national identity”, “assessment of the status of the Russian language in the state”. As for the attitude to independence, in 2007 in the South and East, Russian-speaking citizens treated independence quite differently. In the south of Ukraine there was a slight advantage in support of independence, and in the east on the contrary in anti-support. In 2017, the vast majority of citizens in both the East and the South supported independence. At the point of self-identification, Russian-speaking respondents began to identify more as Ukrainians and less as Russians, but in 2014 there was uncertainty about the self-identification of Russian-speaking citizens. In relation to the status of Russian language in Ukraine until 2014, there was greater support for the status of the second state language, but after 2014, Russian-speaking citizens did not consider the status of Russian as a second state language.

This article analyzes the phenomenon of vigilantism in Odesa, at the rear of the war in Donbas and in the context of a radical redeployment of the Ukrainian state and a redistribution of violence between state and nonstate actors. This analysis is threefold. The first part provides a sociological account of vigilante groups and their members’ social backgrounds. It argues that vigilantism in Odesa has attracted people from four social backgrounds (businessmen, former combatants or security officers, far-right activists, and young people), relies on force-based actions, and implies an intense socialization of vigilantes’ bodies into the use of weapons and combat sports. The second part presents the three social roles of vigilantes—as national community guards, patrolling agents, and justice makers—and explores their associated practices. It shows that an apparently disinterested promotion of public good by vigilantes (security, order, justice) sometimes turns out to be for the benefit of private interests. The third part explores the complex relationship—fluctuating from numerous exchanges of services to a direct confrontation—between vigilante groups and local political and economic elites. Finally, this article argues that the ongoing war has increased the value of vigilantes’ paramilitary resources and has provided them with a large measure of social recognition as a necessary and acceptable response to the armed conflict and its hybrid threats. However, this does not exclude public controversies around vigilantism and questions concerning the challenges it represents for the Ukrainian state. This article draws on anthropological approaches to vigilantism, as well as the sociology of violence and crisis situations (political crises, revolutions, intrastate wars); it relies on a combination of primary ethnographic research and secondary materials. Article in English DOI: 10.25285/2078-1938-2019-11-3-71-104

The internal environment creates certain positive preconditions linked to the new government’s willingness to undertake radical transformations, to impart greater dynamism to internal development and institutional transformations, to accelerate innovations based on the latest digital technologies and to significantly intensify investment processes. The economic results of the previous governments (2014-2019) were diverse and mixed. The finale of election marathons in the first half of 2019 followed by the formation of the new “single-party” ruling team created potentially favourable conditions for introduction of rapid economic transformations and implementation of a productive model for accelerated economic growth and development. However, the potential of opportunities has been exhausted speedily, as positives had no time to manifest. Instead, at the end of the year, serious reasons for disappointment have emerged. 2019 was marked by two major trends in the economy – the continued course towards creation of institutional grounds for encouraging economic development in line with the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and other Ukraine’s international commitments, and efforts to substantially adjust the model of the country’s economic development on the basis of so-called libertarianism, which largely defines the political priorities declared by the new Ukrainian government following the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections. There is a movement in the wake of approaches and priorities of the previous foreign policy course. The government has declared its intentions to deepen European and Euro-Atlantic integration, to develop partnership with the United States, to resolve problems with neighbours, and to end the war in Donbas. However, the reality, at least in the Russian and American “segments”, gives no particular grounds for optimism.

Political parties began to play a greater role in Ukrainian politics at the time of the 1998 parliamentary elections. The introduction of a new semi-proportional electoral law helped shape the party system and had the notable effect of leading to a consolidation of the centrist 'camp' in the ideological spectrum. Because the law required voters to state their party preference explicitly, it also brought parties' support bases into clearer relief. The results gave evidence that the overall patterns of voting established in previous electoral contests were indicative of enduring cleavages in the Ukrainian electorate. The now-familiar divisions based on ethnicity and region were again evident, and the overall left-right division in the new parliament was roughly similar to that in the old. At the same time, the rise to prominence of a new socio-economic cleavage represents an important development in patterns of political identification.

Since the Euromaidan revolution, Ukrainian cinema has been experiencing a renaissance, associated with both the wave of civic and creative activity and the policy of the post-Maidan authorities supporting the film industry. The article analyzes the development of Ukrainian cinema from 2014 to 2019, focusing not only on organizational, institutional, and legal changes but also on the accompanying controversies. It addresses the main socio-political, economic, and cultural factors influencing progress in the number of films produced in Ukraine and their popularization on the domestic and foreign market. The article particularly emphasizes the context of Russian aggression toward Ukraine and the ongoing war in Donbas, as it influences not only the topics taken up by filmmakers but also the priorities of authorities in the field of cultural policy. Cinema has become one of the fronts of the conflict. Thus, the post-Maidan authorities’ concern was both to block Russian content deemed dangerous from the point of view of national security and to produce and promote “Ukrainian-centric” narratives. The last part of the article will discuss the new Ukrainian “patriotic cinema,” supported and subsidized by the state, with a focus on the role it plays in a society experiencing conflict.

This paper provides an analysis of the intellectual and political debate around the role of Russian language and culture in post-Maidan Ukraine. The author retraces (a) the main social and cultural developments emerged in Ukraine in the aftermath of the Euromajdan Revolution (2013-14) and the war in Donbas (2014-), and (b) the directions of cultural policies promoted by the post-Majdan elite (2014-19). Through this twofold reading the article shows the peculiar interrelation between the field of culture and the field of politics in contemporary Ukraine, in an attempt to reveal the specific nuances of the so-called ‘Russian question’.