The invasion of Ukraine can seem to resurrect the images of the past: conquering armies, cities under siege, widespread destruction. The references to the Second World War abound, but they should not obscure the fact that this conflict, with all its complexity and tragedy, belongs firmly to the present.
As Russia sets out to invade Ukraine, eight years after the Maidan Revolution and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ukrainian economist Volodymyr Vakhitov looks back at the transformations Ukraine has undergone since 2014, and its relationship with Russia and Russians.
A virulent nationalism is currently being injected along Russia’s newly blurred southwestern border with Eastern Ukraine. As tempting as it my be to slip back into Cold War rhetorics, Monica Eppinger warns us that the old framework and distant gaze of geopolitics are prone to missing much.
Putin is anti-modern, conservative and expansionist. He is convinced that the Western world in general and Europe in particular are decadent, and advocates a “Russian way”, which he views as an alternative political and social model. Michel Eltchaninoff has analysed this doctrine for us.
In the run-up to Ukraine’s presidential election, political scientist Tatiana Zhurzhenko reflects on the conditions for political representation in a situation of civil conflict. The present state of public opinion is difficult to assess, both inside and outside the country, while an ongoing information war fuels fears and rumours in the regions of Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
According to Ukrainian economist V. Vakhitov, the analyses of the Ukrainian political crisis overstate the importance of the Russian tutelage. The country is not as divided as it is said to be, between Pro-European West and pro-Russian East. Today’s revolts against authorities should be seen as a larger protest against a corrupt regime.
