Articles

The war in Ukraine is said to be the most documented war in history. But can Ukrainians ever convey their true experiences to outsiders? And can outsiders ever fully empathize? Bleak reflections of a Ukrainian cultural diplomat.

One year on from the escalation of Russia’s invasion and there’s no sign of conflict resolution in Ukraine. While controversy abounds over political negotiations, constructive discussions about bearing witness to war and what of Ukraine’s cultural heritage should be preserved are forward thinking.

Ukraine denial is the root cause of Putin’s genocidal war. Since he is unwilling and unable to abandon this ideological obsession, talk of negotiations by western ‘peacemakers’ looks like an attempt to avoid responsibility.

If the collective sacrifice during the Second World War cemented Russian identity in the absence of consensus, then the attack on Ukraine does the same but to a different end. The new ‘we’ feels inescapable, whether one supports Putin or opposes him. A leading Russian poet reflects on guilt and responsibility.

Sudden death stories of democracy do us a disservice. The truth is that democracy can be destroyed in multiple ways, at different tempos. The slowest of these – environmental degradation – is a consequence of the anthropocentric ideal underlying democracy itself.

Two decades of speculative building and misuse of earthquake funds set Turkey up for disaster. Erdoğan’s AKP failed to plan or react, but will do anything to hang on to power.

Can patriotism be virtuous? Although philosophy has increasingly struggled to justify it on moral grounds in recent decades, patriotism remains a powerful source of self-identification and political participation.

The faith in American unanimity that Joe Biden expressed in this year’s State of the Union speech sounded genuine. But how realistic is it in a country dominated by social fragmentation and a flood of alternative realities?

Finding a partner, once reliant on social circles, has become big business. The contemporary ‘blind date’ is no longer a known person recommended by friends but a stranger suggested by algorithms. What are the psychosocial dynamics behind dating platforms and are they changing the basis of romantic love?

As Ukrainian citizens of varying ethnic backgrounds continue to unite in resisting the Russian military onslaught, their identity as Ukrainians is perceived increasingly in terms that are civic, national and inclusive rather than pertaining to ethnic origin.

Is it possible to value time for oneself when barely able to make ends meet? Can fears of energy crises be soothed by ideas of fairer distribution? And can knowledge of more-than-human intelligence ease Anthropocene insecurity and feelings of isolation?

Work and leisure, deemed opposite, are both caught up in the contemporary socio-economic pressure to be productive; time off, forced into servicing respite or distraction, is a commodified entity. Could a universal right to ‘otium’, the ancient concept of time, free from worldly concerns, create the opportunity to work on oneself through oneself?

Faced with energy scarcity exacerbated by war, EU member states are turning to solutions that are environmentally damaging and not affordable for all. Could ‘energy sobriety’, a form of rationing and progressive pricing, be a socially just way of managing a necessary reduction in energy use?

Developments in ecology and technology herald a new Copernican revolution: language, the bastion of supposed human superiority, also belongs to nature and machines. Can expanding our definition of intelligence improve our relationship with the more-than-human world?

Since the Cold War, western literary and educational establishments have reproduced Moscow’s chauvinist view of Ukrainian culture as a derivative of Russian. That attitude is now politically and morally untenable. Ukrainian culture must be liberated along with the multitude of other Slavic languages and cultures belonging to the post-Soviet space.

The current regime in Tbilisi – nominally led by Irakli Garibashvili but with oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili pulling the strings – marks a sea change in Georgia’s gradual pro-western path of development over the past thirty years. For all the faults of past governments, there is no precedent for the authoritarian turn underway since 2020.