Territorial Borders Research Articles

A Paradigm Shift in Relations in the Northeastern Area of the Ukrainian-Russian Borderlands

The theoretical and applied perspectives on the study of neighborhood as a socio-cultural, socio-political, and geographical phenomenon relevant to contemporary ethnology are submitted in the article. The aspects under consideration are dictated by the realities of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which, with its tools, has changed radically the paradigm of coexistence of the communities in the bordering territories, led to a reassessment of relations and formed a new perception of those on the other side of the frontier. Taking into account empirical, statistical, and numerous audiovisual sources, as well as the reflection on the authoress’s own experience of living in the studied space, the researcher presents her original concept of understanding the process of neighborly ties and relations destruction caused by aggression. The main efforts are aimed at showing the changing nature of relations in the borderland amid the war. Focusing specifically on the northeastern area, we have managed to find out that the inhabitants of the territory lost their deep-rooted ethnic complementarity and tolerance for their Russian neighbors mainly after experiencing their hostility. The full-scale invasion, despite years of armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine, has become a turning point. Only personal losses and feelings caused by the events that turned a peaceful space of coexistence into a zone of confrontation polarized communities and forced them to build boundaries in their relationships. The social closeness natural to the borderland environment and the fake kinship imposed at the same time, which gave rise to a false sense of a safe neighborhood, are described in the paper. Significant attention is paid to war narratives reflecting the tendencies of dividing into “us” and “them”, contain expressive verbal formulas that transmit opposition and negative emotions as a response to aggression. The submitted model of analysis begins the consideration of issues that are extremely acute in the context of studying the anthropology of conflicts.

Особенности пространственного и экономико-демографического развития китайского города Хэйхэ

The trend for high-quality development in various areas of Chinese society is spreading to border areas under the modern border management model that combines security and economic empowerment. The leading role is given to the economic growth of cities on the border and attracting residents from internal Chinese regions to live in the border area. The purpose of the work is to determine the influence of spatial, economic and demographic factors on the development of the territory of the northeastern city of Heihe, bordering Russia, within the framework of the updated strategy for regional coordinated development and the strategy for transforming border areas. The study used a systematic method, which made it possible to identify patterns of spatial development of the border city of Heihe, and a statistical method, which contributed to the consideration of quantitative characteristics of the economic and demographic development of Heihe. The article draws attention to the fact that the spatial and economic development of border Heihe is based on the formation of an innovative industrial center, a modernized agricultural base, and a territory of ‘openness’ in Northeast Asia with a developed transport infrastructure. It is substantiated that the revival of the city of Heihe is due to transformations of the agricultural complex and mining industry with the introduction of high-tech innovations. The leading role is given to Chinese-Russian cooperation, which is expanding every year. All strategic projects of Heihe depend on the effective solution of such demographic problems as the reduction in the city's population, the outflow of population to other regions and the aging population. The materials of the article can be used by Russian authorities in the development of territories bordering China, and also serve as the basis for further research on this topic.

Group-differentiated rights for Indigenous communities that straddle borders

ABSTRACT This paper examines the normative justification for special rights for Indigenous peoples whose traditional territories straddle contemporary international borders. Examining the Mohawks of Akwesasne (Quebec, Ontario, and New York state) and the Tohono O’odham (Arizona and Sonora, Mexico) as cases, I demonstrate how state claims to territorial jurisdiction and border regulation often interfere with the lives of Indigenous people whose social, cultural, economic, spiritual and political practices and relationships cluster across contemporary international boundaries. Through the concept of group occupancy interests, I argue that members of Indigenous nations whose territories straddle borders possess special rights to access and use lands presently claimed by states of which they are not recognized citizens. Moreover, I demonstrate how border-straddling Indigenous nations challenge the unlimited sovereignty of contemporary states with respect to border policy: the occupancy and self-determination interests of Indigenous peoples may ground the moral rights of their communities to co-manage international border crossings with states. Finally, I argue that collective interests in cross-border political identities and self-determination can ground the rights of Indigenous peoples to form unified cross-border jurisdictional units that demand recognition by states, alongside the rights of Indigenous peoples to regulate group membership.

Engineering indigenous dispossession and plantation slavery in the Southeast Gulf coast

In this paper we examine the activities of US Army topographers and engineers in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) watershed during the violent transformation of the region from the heartlands of the Creek confederacy to US territorial control. A vital waterway for the Creek in the late eighteenth century, the rivers would become an important transportation network in the US plantation economy by the early nineteenth century. We emphasize that the army made its initial infrastructural improvements in the region to provide security for the plantation system. Army engineering in the ACF watershed began in the struggle for the Gulf borderlands, as white American settlers, British forces, Indigenous peoples, and Black maroons fought for control over the contested terrain. US engineers and topographers produced territorial knowledge and physical infrastructure to facilitate the occupation of Indigenous territory and elimination of potential spaces of Black freedom. Topographic knowledge would later serve as the foundation for restructuring the land as property, naturalizing its possession by white plantation owners. Similarly, roads and waterway improvements, created to facilitate troop movements, would later serve as vital transportation infrastructure for settlement and expanding plantation slavery. This paper demonstrates how military engineering techniques designed to secure the Nation in the context of race war subsequently provided the coordinates for reorganizing the land within an emergent plantation economy inside its territorial borders.

Externally Driven Border Control in West Africa: Local Impact and Broader Ramifications

Over the last two decades and with notable increase since 2015, millions of euros have been invested in territorial border governance in West Africa. Targeting migration policy frameworks, capacity building, and the provision of material, the EU and individual European states have sought to improve control mechanisms along these vast and porous borders. This article explores the local impact and broader ramifications of primarily externally funded policy efforts as they are implemented along Ghana's three international borders with Burkina Faso, Côte D’Ivoire, and Togo. Drawing on observations at official checkpoints and interviews with border control officers and border crossers, the article finds that recent initiatives have facilitated the modernization, expansion, and professionalization of border control. Yet, these enhancements have concurrently led to increased reliance on external support, altered local social relations in border checkpoint areas, and triggered the criminalization of legal emigration. The article situates these developments within its geopolitical landscape, illustrating how externally driven migration governance, when detached from local realities, yields both immediate and far-reaching ramifications. Drawing on and extending critical migration governance analysis and border theory, this study underscores the importance of scrutinizing not only explicit, but also the more subtle and rippling effects of European externalization policies in Africa, as they extend beyond local contexts to influence wider societal structures.

Belarusization in Russian Regions in the 1920s in Modern Russian Historiography

The article presents a historiographical review of publications on the policy of Belarusization carried out in the Russian regions in the 1920s. This work does not address the publications of Belarusian and foreign researchers on the practice of implementing the new Soviet national policy within the territorial borders of the Belarusian Republic. The main attention is paid to the three Russian provinces bordering Belarus – Pskov, Smolensk and Bryansk. At the same time, the eastern territories of the RSFSR – the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East, where Belarusians found themselves as a result of the resettlement policy, especially at the beginning of the 20th century during the Stolypin agrarian reform, were not ignored. Belarusization, as part of the general policy of Korenization, proclaimed in 1923 at the XII Congress of the Russian Communist Party (b), in modern research is closely linked to the need to show new principles and directions of Soviet national policy for the development of Belarusian statehood and culture in contrast to the all-out polonization carried out by the Pilsudski government in Western Ukrainian and Belarusian lands ceded to Poland by the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921. A significant role in this process was assigned to the expansion of the state borders of the BSSR at the expense of Russian territories, especially in 1924 and 1926. However, Belarusization did not find any real support from the local authorities, who considered Belarusians to be part of the Russian population until the end of the 1920s, as well as due to the significant self-Russification of the Belarusian population in the Russian regions that had already taken place by the middle of the decade. Formally, these tasks were constantly on the agenda of the party and Soviet authorities in the second half of the 1920s. But they have not received any significant practical implementation.

Akberdino-3 – the Great Migration Period Manor in the Forest-Steppe Zone of Southern Pre-Urals

The present study is based on materials obtained during archaeological excavations at the Akberdino-3 site in 2009. The site is located on the right bank of the Belaya River in the forest-steppe zone of Southern Pre-Urals (modern Iglinsky District of the Republic of Bashkortostan, 15 km southeast from the Ufa-city). It is shown that a single thin cultural layer of this small settlement site contains Imendyashevo, Turbasly ceramics, and ceramics with a mixture of both these traditions, and can be dated to the 4th century AD (most likely from the middle to the end of this period), but this manor existed for a very short time. The studied osteological sample was compared with data on 18 zooarchaeological samples from Southern Ural and bordering territories. Multivariate analysis of this dataset has shown that at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD there was a significant transformation in the composition of herd, held by local population.

Ancient civilizations’ territorial borders analyzed through their cosmogonies

This paper compares the ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamian civilizations’ concept of borders and their relation with the spaces they transformed through a comparative approach of selected ancient civilizations, putting these cosmogonies into a chronological evolutionary line. The distinct motifs, symbols, and theological frameworks are examined through secondary sources. While each of these civilizations counts with individual studies, few serious attempts have been made to address these four civilizations together. The discussion aims to set the premises of the importance of borders in contemporary urban and territorial studies when religion often has a secondary role. While they were critical elements in the definition of territorial limits in the past, their inheritance is still present in our contemporary concept of borders as producers of fears.

The Politics of Emotions, Bio-Political Border Practices and the Question of (In)security on the Turkish Political Territorial Borders

ABSTRACT This paper conceptually and analytically delineates the operation and employment of discourses and the political emotions of fear and anxiety in the making, conception, and cartographic imagination of the contours of modern Turkey’s political territorial boundaries. This study posits that the emergence and formation of the Turkish political territorial borders after the traumatic and violent experience of the cataclysmic shrinking, collapse and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire continue to influence discourses, emotions, practices and policies of border security and policing. Borders and borderlands are not only sites where the state performs, exercises and displays its sovereign will and power in protecting national security, dignity, pride and honor, but also sources and harbingers of fears, anxieties and ontological (in)securities. In the context of the highly publicized immigration influx of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis and others into Turkey, this paper argues that discourses and emotions of fear, anxiety and hate regained new currency and have become consequential in the state’s eliciting of consent from the masses in instituting border walls, fences and harsh border policing practices and policies on the borderlands and in cities across the country.

Muslims of Central Asia in Siberia in the Context of State‑Confessional Policy in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries

The Muslim population of Siberia represented an ethnically heterogeneous community, which included Tatars, as well as immigrants from Central and Central Asia, the Caucasus and other regions. Such polyethnicity and proximity to the Asian region, as one of the centers of Muslim culture, contributed to building contacts between Muslims of Siberia and Central Asia. Expansion of the territorial borders of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. and the government’s special interest in Central Asia has influenced the development of relations between the Muslim population of the two neighboring regions. The purpose of this study was to identify the main areas of interaction between the Muslim population of Siberia and Central Asia in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century, as well as to estimate the role of the state in regulating this process. Based on archival material, the author found that one of the areas of interaction of the Muslim population was organizing spiritual life. Despite the fact that the government, in an effort to extend its influence to the Asian region, provided support to the Muslim population in the second half of the 19th century, the same building codes were applied to the construction of religious buildings for Bukharans, as for all other Muslims. The closest contacts between the Muslims of Siberia and the Bukharians were built within the framework of pilgrimage trips, since often the way to Mecca for them lay through the territories of Central Asia. In addition, there were holy places in the region, which the Muslims of Siberia aspired to. This fact was of particular concern to the Government. The reforms initiated in the country aimed at limitation of the rights of the Muslim population have reduced the migration flow from the Asian region to Siberia. The government paid special attention to the missionary activities of the Russian Orthodox Church as a tool for involving Muslims of Siberia and Central Asia in the socio-cultural space of the empire.

Assessing South African metropolitan cities’ online place brands

This exploratory paper assesses the websites of South Africa’s eight metropolitan cities to ascertain how each uses place branding to anchor itself in the global economy. The paper commences by describing the evolution of South Africa’s local government landscape. After that, the paper pivots place branding as a competition-setting process. Next on the agenda is a discussion on the role and significance of metropolitan cities in driving nation-state economic growth and a description of well-functioning websites, which form the framework of analysis. A presentation of the websites of each of South Africa’s metropolitan cities follows this. The paper uses screenshots to guide this presentation. The paper illuminates significant gaps and oversights in projecting South Africa’s metropolitan cities to the international community, tourists and businesses. The paper concludes by offering reflective notes on the need for intensified place branding processes in South Africa. The paper contributes to place branding scholarship by interrogating the efficacy of platforms that are becoming pervasive in transporting narratives and agendas far beyond territorial borders. It diversifies the place branding discipline and advocates for its further exposition and understanding.

Conflict, Borderlands and Displacement: The Persistent and Escalating Crisis in Northwest India

Borderlands are the geographical spaces or zones around a territorial border between nations. Defined by the borders that create and maintain the nation–state, the borderlands are the sites in the making, continually moulded, transformed or reconstructed by the social actors inhabiting them. Going beyond the boundary lines, borderlands encapsulate a much broader area where the impact of happenings at the border is felt and reverberated. Borderlands are of different types. They are classified as ‘alienated’ when dominated by conflict, hostility, insecurity and instability, as in parts of northwest India, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since 1947–1948. The border between India and Pakistan in J&K called the ‘Line of Control’ (LoC), is a de facto and not an international boundary and remains contested, disturbed, militarised and controlled. The borderlands surrounding it have witnessed many wars, war-like situations and displacement of people with several socio-economic ramifications. The post-colonial state tried to settle these conundrums of border-making but got entangled in the persistent and escalating crisis of intractable border disputes. The state and the media reconstructed and reproduced the rhetoric of nationalism and national security, sustaining the conflict and border entanglements. This paper argues for an alternative discourse to understand the crises of conflict based on people’s lived experiences, border formation and displacement in the wake of the partition of India and thereafter.

De-bordering and re-bordering practices at the intersection of gender and migration. A multi-site exploration of specialized services for migrant women experiencing violence in Italy and Sweden

This study builds on analyses of everyday professional practices to explore de-bordering and re-bordering processes in the field of gender-based violence (GBV). The concepts of de-bordering and re-bordering practices express the tensions arising from the conflictual roles taken on by civil society actors (CSAs) in their double vest of service delivery for the state and advocate for migrant women with a precarious legal status. Further, this study focuses on three types of CSAs: women-led NGOs, faith-based organizations, and other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) operating in two EU contexts, i.e., Sweden and Italy. The multi-study approach helps to bring to the forefront systems of knowledge and classifications that, on the one hand, are linked to the national sovereign power and its specific way of filtering people based on racialized and gendered socioeconomic categories and, on the other hand, produce spaces of resistance or negotiation of those categories within multiple forms of dominance. Ultimately, based on the empirical cases, it is argued that even though criticalities and limits expressed through re-bordering practices are highly present, these de-bordering practices manifest the efforts of CSAs to break down or transcend territorial borders and divisions with the ultimate goal of moving beyond legal entitlements, territorial boundaries, and nationalist ideologies.

Reading Paasi and Living through Bounded Spaces

AbstractThis brief article dedicates a few subjective considerations to the versatility and afterlives of Paasi's conceptual thinking, enriching the way we perceive spaces and borders in highly differentiated environments and times. I will confess my uneasiness with bounded spaces and explore the origins of that unease. I draw inspiration from feminist geography, which embraces subjectivity, dispelling the myth of objectivity. Although not explicitly referenced by Paasi himself, Paasi's article implicitly poses similar feminist questions: Who gains? Who is overlooked and who loses within bounded spaces and ‘borderless’ orders? For whom are spatial and territorial borders beneficial, and whom do they oppress? I will further examine how the ideas of spaces, borders and boundaries have evolved in my specific interpretation of Paasi's writing. The text will be interspersed with insights into lived experiences of regions, products, brands and people's consciousness, or, as in my case, awkward embodied experiences.

Return Policies for Irregular Migrants and Rejected Asylum Seekers in Croatia

Croatia acceded to the European Union in 2013 and the Schengen Area in 2023; it is located on the EU’s external border and the so-called Western Balkans irregular migration route, one of the main corridors for migrants travelling to the EU. Over the years, Croatian authorities have developed national immigration policies, including various measures to prevent irregular migration on Croatian territory and protect state borders. Nonetheless, Croatia is still perceived as a transit country and a point of entry into the EU by many irregular migrants and refugees. This paper provides an overview of measures for the return of irregular migrants and rejected asylum seekers in Croatia. In addition to discussing the most relevant legislation regulating return policies, the paper presents available statistical data on the work of the relevant Croatian authorities (the Ministry of Interior and courts). It analyses current practices of administrative and constitutional courts, as well as some actions taken by the European Court of Human Rights against Croatia. It concludes with some general comments on Croatia’s return policy. The analyses of legislation, mainly the Aliens Act and to some extent, the International and Temporary Protection Act, shows that Croatia has regulated in detail different measures within its return policies. This legislation aligns with the EU and Schengen acquis communautaire, and provides different safeguards for vulnerable groups of migrants. Legal remedies and judicial protection are guaranteed by the relevant law. However, in practice there are certain shortcomings that need to be addressed.

Бежецкий живописец Михаил Васильевич Тыранов и его ученики: к атрибуции церковных стенописей северо-востока Тверского края

The article introduces for the first time archival documents into scientific circulation, revealing the names of masters and customers, the exact time and circumstances of the creation of the most significant monuments of monumental church art in the North-East of the Tver region. Analysis of sources shows that church wall-painting flourished in the region in the second quarter of the 19th century is largely associated with the name of Mikhail Tyranov, an art teacher and guild master painter from the district town of Bezhetsk, Tver province. The name of this master was known far beyond the borders of his hometown, and his works were highly valued by his contemporaries. During the period from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s. The artel of M. Tyranov painted dozens of churches, not only in the Tver province, but also in the territories bordering it in the Yaroslavl province. The paintings made in the style of classicism by the artel of M. Tyranov have been preserved in the churches of the Bezhetsky district of the Tver region: church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Sukromny, church of the Epiphany in the village of Yes’ky, church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Alabuzino; church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Shablykino, Krasnokholmsky district, Tver region; church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Knyazhevo, Uglich district, Yaroslavl region. The traditions of church wall-painting during the period of transition from classicism to eclecticism (1850–1860s) were continued by the students of M. Tyranov. The most successful among them were masters from the city of Vesyegonsk, Ivan and Andrey Smirnov. Among the outstanding monuments of monumental art, the work of the Smirnov artel: church of the Transfiguration in the village of Nikola-Vysoka (Vesyegonsky district of the Tver region) and church of the Ascension in the village of Novokotovo (Molokovsky district, Tver region). The article attempts to reconstruct the creative biographies of previously unknown masters. Analysis of the continuity of art schools within the Tver province, as well as the establishment of connections between masters and Moscow and St. Petersburg, helps to deepen the understanding of the development of provincial art in the 19th century.

On territorial border markers of the settlement of Russians of the Middle Tom River region in the beginning of the 18th — mid 20th centuries

The concept of studying of ethnographic and archaeological complexes (EAC) involves the analysis of their individual components: population, villages, communication routes and others, including borders — both external and internal. The analysis of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic literature has shown that borders or borderlands can be traced in almost all populations at any stage of their development. However, while the borders between large associations, like states or ethnic groups with different cultures, have been addressed by experts, almost no attention is being given to local boundaries between smaller collectives, although there are written, cartographic and oral sources that can be used as a basis for such research. After considering the materials of various origins concerning the native villages of the Middle Tom region, it became possible to discuss the bounda-ries between them, and the boundaries of the administrative entities which encompassed them in the 18th century. At this time, residents of villages located 15–30 km north of the Kuznetsk fortress were moving to new unoccupied lands in the upper reaches of the river Inia and its upper tributaries, as well as to the left bank of Tom below the mouth of the Mungat River. According to the drawings of S.U. Remezov, there was a boundary between the Tomsk and Kuznetsk districts. The borderline rivers could be Unga-Promyshlennaya in the north and Osipovo-Mungat in the south. Possibly, there were small settlements of Tulbers. After the middle of the 19th century, an-other process of settlement of the Tom riverbank territories of its both sides began. By the 1930s, all its banks were inhabited, and the reserve of free lands came to end. Indigenous people began developing islands on the river or starting settlements within 15–20 km from the village. In the second third of the 20th century, new villages were developing in the remote territories away from Tom. Almost all of them were abandoned in the second half of the 20th century. The available information suggests that there were borderlands between the villages within single districts. Most often these were represented by watercourses — small rivers and streams, ridges — elon-gated hills located perpendicular to terraces, and sometimes lakes. These borders were well known to locals. It cannot be ruled out that river rapids and shoals could also have been used as borders. The analysis of the corre-lation of locations of the villages, river rifts and stretches suggests that, in the studied area of Tom, villages were located on the river stretches between the shoals. There is also information about the existence of boundaries between minor objects, though they require further research.

Like Drifting Sand Dunes: Noisy Lessons in a Porous Field

AbstractThis paper argues that the teaching of art in Higher Educational Institutions is inherently paradoxical. Informed by the transgressive and interdisciplinary qualities of contemporary artistic practices, education nevertheless is often made to fit into a reductionist, outcome‐oriented and individualistic discourse. Taking a weeklong workshop at the Nida Art Colony in Lithuania as a practical axis for its reflections on the fluid nature of art education, the paper discusses possibilities of extending beyond pedagogical, political, human/nonhuman and other borders and treating ‘noise’ and other ‘interferences’ as opportunities for transgression and dialogue. This workshop with students from the Vilnius Academy of Arts took place in September 2022, at a time characterised by the Russia–Ukraine war. Nida's proximity to Russia's exclave Kaliningrad, its location on the narrow Curonian Spit, and its immediate environment characterised by woods and sand dunes provide this paper with a setting for a discussion about a variety of borders: territorial borders, border pedagogies, perceived borders between human and nonhuman entities, between land and sea, and so on. Borders are described as dominant indicators of power and distinction, while educational standards and instruments of measurement often replicate similar distinctions between the known and the unfamiliar. Yet, borders can also be shifted while new connections and dialogues across real and conceptual borders can be forged in a porous process that is predisposed towards flexible scenarios characterised by the ‘not‐yet’. The surrounding forest and wetlands and huge drifting sand dunes in Nida become analogies for the changing structure of the workshop, silently yet overpoweringly advocating for a mutable pedagogy. Analysed through the work of various contemporary artists, this nonhuman intrusion into a pedagogical and creative experience is both undefined and vulnerable, unlike the preordained structures of attainment targets often associated with contemporary schooling.

Chernobyl/Chornobyl Imagery in Popular Music: Voices From Ukraine

The Chornobyl disaster took on planetary significance, but Ukrainian voices were marginalized for many years by more powerful, dominant discourses. This paper explores how Chornobyl trauma has been re-presented by Ukrainian popular music artivists between 2000 and 2020. The case study focuses on narrating, visualizing, and vocalizing strategies by Andriy Kuzmenko, Nata Zhyzhchenko, and Valeriy Korshunov. The author aims to show how these projects were inspired by the Anthropocene ideas. The paper demonstrates how the Ukrainian artists crossed territorial and cultural borders while concurrently transforming the image of the Chornobyl Zone from being a bordered alienated land into a boderscape of interaction between diverse agents.

Influence of atmospheric rivers on extreme precipitation in western Ukraine

Formulation of the problem. In recent years, interest in the atmospheric river (AR) phenomenon is growing, as more and more researchers associate it with extreme precipitation. Relatively few works are devoted to the assessment of the influence of atmospheric rivers on precipitation in Eastern Europe. The purpose of the article is to assess the occurrence of atmospheric river events during extreme precipitation in the western regions of Ukraine (Lviv and Volyn regions) and to analyze the geographical features of the spatial distribution of atmospheric river bends during extreme precipitation. Methods. We used the catalog of atmospheric rivers identified according to the methodology of D. Walliser and B. Guan to analyze the occurrence of atmospheric river events on the territory of the western part of Ukraine. Also, we used the sample of days with extreme precipitation (greater than 95th percentile for each meteorological station and each month) in the Lviv and Volyn oblasts of Ukraine to match it with AR episodes. It is shown that in most cases extreme precipitation events were accompanied by the atmospheric river phenomenon detected on the territory of Ukraine or the bordering territories. Results. The typical shape of atmospheric river bends during extreme precipitation most often is arc-shaped while the typical spatial coverage stretched from North Africa through the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey to the territory of Ukraine. Less often, the form of detected AR area had the form of a meridional bend extending from the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea towards Ukraine. However, the analysis showed that the presence of atmospheric river phenomenon is not the exceptional reason for extreme precipitation. Part of the extreme precipitation events is associated with specific synoptic situations (precipitation caused by cold fronts or occluded fronts) whereas conditions for atmospheric river detection are not fulfilled (bend size, meridional flow component, flow intensity). Atmospheric river episodes were not observed at most of the days of general sample (on average 72.36%) within the study area based on the period of 1991-2020. At the same time, precipitation events in the absence of AR were recorded on average in 32.2% of days (relative to the total number of days). In the presence of AR, precipitation was not recorded in about a third of cases. In the sample of days in the absence of AR and in the presence of AR, the proportion of precipitation of different gradations is as follows: for 10-20 mm is 2.73% and 2.64% respectively; for 20-50 mm is 1.37% and 1.63%; more than 50 mm is 0 .19% against 0.16%. In the spring, there is a certain consistency with the negative daily value of the NAO index and the AR axis orientation from the southwest to the territory of Ukraine. Thus, within 5 days before the localization of AR on the territory of Ukraine, values of the NAO index <-0.5 are noted, but the index changes in the process of the pressure field change. Based on a limited sample of extreme precipitation (94 cases), we assessed the correspondence of the precipitation rate to the area of atmospheric rivers and their features of the spatial orientation. ARs extending from the southwest (north of Africa) and the south (western part of the Mediterranean Sea) are characterized by the greatest recurrence. No regularities were found either concerning the dependence of the precipitation rate on the orientation of the AR, or concerning the dependence of the number of stations with extreme precipitation on the orientation of the AR. No linear dependence was found for the area of atmospheric rivers within both the study region and the territory of Eastern and Southeastern Europe with daily precipitation in the western regions of Ukraine.