In the War: Nationalism, Imperialism, Cosmopolitics
For most questions that I am going to examine, I must confess that I have no ready answer. Even worse: in many cases, I fear that these answers do not exist. However, this cannot prevent us from seeking these answers, and before that finding the correct formulation for the questions themselves, with the help of […]
Russian Capitalism Today: A Case of ‘Primacy of Politics’?
The economic regime that has emerged in Russia has received a wide variety of characterizations and label forms. There are different terms from ‘state capitalism’ or various versions of ‘state capitalism’ such as Catherine Belton’s ‘hybrid KGB form of state capitalism’ to describe the regime under Putin, to Karen Dawisha’s ‘authoritarian kleptocracy’, Richard Sakwa’s ‘managed […]
Humanitarian aid is not enough
The war is now grinding into its fifth month and costing hundreds of lives every day, with no immediate end in sight. To get his perspective on what has unfolded since his letter was first published, Ivo Georgiev of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Kyiv Office sat down with Taras Bilous to discuss the war, the debate […]
Ukraine’s ecosystems: the price for global food security
Ukraine is an important player in the global market of agricultural production. It is one of the world’s top-10 grain exporters, and it is the global leader in growing and export of sunflower seeds and oil. In 2021, Ukraine harvested 85 million tons of grain and intended to export 67 million tons during the 2021-2022 […]
The political logic of Russia’s imperialism
Beside my interrupted fieldwork in Ukraine (2021), this contribution to the war debate is based on my fieldwork in Belarus (2015-2017) and my conclusions on how Lukashenka’s ‘Caesarist regime’ mutated when faced with popular and geopolitical challenges to its ‘passive-revolutionary strategy’ (Artiukh 2020, 2021), to use Gramsci’s vocabulary. Drawing on my insights from Ukraine and […]
Social Protection in Postwar Ukraine: Time to Change Approaches
In April 2022, a new consultative body was established under the President of Ukraine: the National Council for the Restoration of Ukraine from the Consequences of War. The Council works on 23 fields of social life. Selected experts are supposed to draft plans for postwar restoration in each of these fields. The fields include social […]
With the resistance of the Ukrainian people for its victory against the aggression
As in the days of the Vietnamese people's liberation struggle, we have always been on the side of the oppressed and aggressed peoples, whether by the United States (and its NATO allies) or by the USSR (and its Warsaw Pact allies). We are aware that, crossing the various oceans and continents, the struggle for national […]
The War in Ukraine, International Security, and the Left
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has no justification, but NATO…” It is difficult to describe the emotions I and other Ukrainian socialists feel about this “but” in the statements and articles of many Western leftists. Unfortunately, it is often followed by attempts to present the Russian invasion as a defensive reaction to the “aggressive expansion […]
«Let’s not get into the wrong fight! We must support the Ukrainians without thinking twice or holding back»
Since February 24, Vladimir Putin has been waging a war of conquest against Ukraine. His army has been bombing and destroying cities, killing civilians by the thousands, as it did in Chechnya and Syria. The Ukrainians are resisting. We must support them without thinking twice or holding back. In most of our countries, however, too […]
Destruction of signs, signs of destruction
Russia’s president justified his attack on Ukraine by referring to denazification, while Ukrainian inhabitants and authorities compare the behaviour of Russian soldiers with that of German Nazi occupiers. The memory of the Second World War shared by the citizens of both countries could not avoid instrumentalization, especially around the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation celebrated in Ukraine (May 8) […]
