Journal of International Relations and Development
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00315-0
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Kseniya Oksamytna1
© Springer Nature Limited 2023
Abstract
Commendable efforts to include Ukrainian researchers in academic debates on the
Russian invasion of Ukraine nevertheless reflect knowledge hierarchies that characterise contemporary academia, which is compounded by the difficulties that
scholars face when they study violence in their own communities. On a practical
level, Ukrainian researchers were busy performing the physical work of surviving
or, if based abroad, the emotional work of worrying about the safety of friends and
family. Many volunteered their time and resources for Ukrainian causes. The pastoral care and public engagement elements of their job expanded. Some Ukrainian
scholars also engaged in tone (self)policing in order to prevent their arguments from
alienating key audiences or being dismissed as too partisan or naive. The peculiarities of Ukrainian contemporary history and politics – (for instance, its self-perceived
belonging to ‘the West’ and the fact that ‘Western’ countries have contributed the
most to Ukraine’s self-defence) at times resulted in a lack of common vocabulary
with postcolonial and critical scholarship. This article calls for deeper understanding and closer engagement between academics and activists working in and on the
‘Global East’ and the ‘Global South’, as well as for more self-aware and caring ways
of researching war.
Keywords Knowledge production · Ukraine · Global South · Global East · Russian
invasion
Introduction
Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were calls for greater
inclusion of Ukrainian researchers in the debates about the war (Khromeychuk
2022). Yet Ukrainian researchers inside and outside Ukraine encountered barriers in engaging in such debates. Some of these challenges were linked to increased
demands on Ukrainian researchers’ time. Others arose from the expectations in
* Kseniya Oksamytna
[email protected]
1
City University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK
Vol.:(0123456789)
K. Oksamytna
international academia about what knowledge is valuable and how it should be produced, presented, and disseminated. Finally, some challenges also related to the difficulties in building global dialogues with other researchers (and survivors) of war,
imperialism, and mass atrocities due to disciplinary, ideological, and geopolitical
divides into which Ukraine does not neatly fit (Labuda 2023).
As a scholar of peacekeeping and international organizations who researches conflicts in Africa, Southeastern Asia, and the Caribbean, I have followed the debates on
the difference in the status of ‘global’ and ‘local’ expertise (e.g. Marchais, Bazuzi,
and Amani Lameke 2020; Kessi et al. 2020). Ukrainian researchers, especially those
based in Ukraine, are also sometimes seen as a source of ‘local’ perspectives on
the Russian invasion rather than a ‘global’ or comparative understanding of war.
Even though the full-scale invasion created a demand for their input, it still had to be
delivered in accordance with disciplinary conventions, media cycles, and political
sensibilities in countries of the ‘core West’(Chaban and Headley 2023; Hendl 2022;
Kurylo 2023).
In this article, I discuss three types of challenges that Ukrainian researchers faced
when producing knowledge on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: care, service, and
emotional labour; tone (self)policing; and variable levels of sympathy and solidarity
from colleagues in postcolonial, critical, and at times feminist quarters. In the concluding section, I offer preliminary reflections on how dialogues across disciplinary,
ideological, and geopolitical divides could be fostered. These personal observations
are necessarily tentative, subjective, and incomplete, and I certainly cannot speak
about the experiences of the entire Ukrainian research community. More systematic
studies in the future would be a valuable contribution to the growing literature on
hierarchies and inequalities in academic knowledge production (e.g. Stavrevska et al
2023; Mälksoo 2021a; Kaczmarska and Ortmann 2021; Zvobgo et al 2023).
Care, service, and emotional labour
Contemporary academia is characterised by intense competition and ‘individual
hyperproduction’ (Stavrevska et al 2023: 17). After the full-scale Russian invasion, researchers based in Ukraine struggled to maintain their pre-2022 productivity levels.1 Many researchers joined the defence forces, engaged in volunteering,
or became displaced within or beyond Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian researchers
based at institutions outside Ukraine had the enormous privilege of not experiencing
the violence first-hand and ‘only’ worrying about the safety of friends and families.
Many helped Ukrainian relatives and acquaintances flee and adapt to lives in new
locations. Many took part in protests and donation drives. Many provided pastoral
care to Ukrainian students and participated in initiatives by their institutions to assist
1
It is important to remember that even before the 2022 escalation, many researchers based in Ukraine
were affected by the Russian invasion that began in 2014 if they lived on, or fled from, temporarily occupied territories.
Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
universities in Ukraine. All this came on top of regular responsibilities in terms of
teaching, research, administration, and applying for funding.
Ukrainians academics based abroad also witnessed the expansion of the academic
service and public engagement component of their job. Many volunteered to speak
to the media and participate in academic or policy discussions on the implications of
the full-scale invasion as universities competed to provide analysis of the unfolding
events. Ukrainian academics’ participation in these discussions was driven in part
by a sense of duty to correct the prevailing misconceptions (e.g. Sonevytsky 2022)
and in part by an awareness that their employers needed to showcase expertise on
this key matter, scarce as it might have been due to the underfunding of research on
the ‘Global East’ (e.g. Kaczmarska and Ortmann 2021). At the same time, media
directed their requests to Ukrainian scholars based at universities outside Ukraine
rather than in the country. Ukrainian scholars based abroad were at times asked to
comment on the war regardless of the primary focus on their research and, as Chaban and Headley (2023, 12) note, ‘[m]ost felt it strange to be asked to speak on areas
outside their direct expertise and refused to do so.’ As for myself, after one short
piece in The Conversation on how international hierarchies explained the relations
between Ukraine and Russia, I suddenly received multiple media invitations to comment on the military-strategic aspects of the Russian invasion. I had to turn many of
them down, particularly when they were anchored by the question of ‘when Ukraine
would (finally) make peace with Russia’. Questions like this not only insinuated that
Ukraine was somehow at fault for the start and continuation of the Russian aggression but also implied that Ukraine should accept the continued occupation of its
territories.
Since there seemed to be more Ukrainian researchers working in the humanities,
area studies, and comparative politics than International Relations or strategic studies, and since war is usually narrowly seen as ‘an IR issue’, foreign experts quickly
filled the niche. My decision at the start of my career to pursue IR had been shaped
both by my interests and the career incentives of contemporary academia that ‘privileges IR theorising over empirical research on and from places outside of the Western core’ (Kaczmarska and Ortmann 2021: 821). Since my surname is not obviously
Ukrainian to people from outside the region, I embraced the ambiguity (a colleague
who saw it on a university website confessed that they assumed I was either from
Japan or Nigeria). It might have helped me avoid being pigeonholed as an expert on
‘my’ region, which is a typical experience for scholars from Eastern Europe (Burlyuk 2019). It came as a surprise to some colleagues that I was from Ukraine when
the full-scaled Russian invasion began. Upon discovering it, they (in a well-meaning
way) invited me to panels and events to discuss the invasion. I sometimes had to
decline for reasons outlined in this section, as well as due the occasional lack of
energy to brace myself for hearing Russian propaganda repeated at me by seemingly
well-informed audiences of colleagues and students (see also Sonevytsky 2022).
When declining those invitations, I worried that I came across as insufficiently dedicated to the Ukrainian cause or to the IR discipline that tried to understand this
‘new’ major ‘crisis’.
Of course, issues faced by Ukrainian researchers outside Ukraine paled in comparison with those faced by academics in Ukraine. Those in Ukraine experienced
K. Oksamytna
their living standards, mental health, and work patterns being disrupted by Russia’s
terrorist tactics of targeting civilian objects and energy infrastructure; those outside
Ukraine had to deal with ‘survivor guilt’ (Axyonova and Lozka 2023). Eventually,
many researchers, both in Ukraine and abroad, found a ‘war-life balance’, while still
being concerned about not producing more academic ‘outputs’ or not doing enough
for Ukraine. For some Ukrainian researchers based abroad, the pressure to maintain high levels of productivity in order to attain (more senior) academic positions
stemmed not only from the quest for wealth or prestige but also the preparations for
absorbing further shocks associated with the continued Russian aggression (more
relatives and friends could require assistance) or the desire to donate to Ukrainian
NGOs helping the frontline. Wherever they were based, Ukrainian researchers fulfilled additional duties in support of their communities, which was one of the practical challenges they faced in participating in international knowledge production.
Tone (self)policing
In addition to these challenges, Ukrainian colleagues chose their words especially
carefully when speaking or writing about the war. They might have been apprehensive that some of their statements would make ‘core Western’ audiences uncomfortable, such as refusals to discuss reconciliation between Ukrainians and Russians
during ongoing mass atrocities. This could, in turn, as some feared, weaken the support for Ukraine in the long run: Ukrainians were accused of being ‘warmongers’
when they expressed support for their country’s resistance to the Russian aggression. Some avoided mentions of graphic violence out of fear that ‘emotional’ testimonies would be dismissed, especially if they came from women scholars (Kurylo
2023; Tsymbalyuk 2023). Interestingly, emotional testimonies were sought after at
certain stages of the war and in specific arenas: as Chaban and Headley (2023: 12)
observed, in the first months of the full-scale invasion, the media were often ‘looking for emotional responses from academics with personal connection to the war
rather than [ways] to hear their informed analysis’. Similarly, Hendl (2022: 81) noted
that Ukrainian voices, which ‘used to be deemed biased and untrustworthy, suddenly
in wartime...[were] being sought, to fill knowledge gaps and popular demand for the
anticipated emotional performance’.
Yet as time passed, Ukrainian voices became sought-after for being nonemotional, for example, for being able to ‘connect’ the case of Ukraine to ‘broader’ IR
discussions. For this reason, it’s unclear whether a return to pre-February 2022 status quo ante looked likely and whethere Ukrainian scholars who spoke out vocally
against the Russian aggression and described the horrors of Russian war crimes
accurately would again be dismissed as ‘irrational, emotional, paranoid, biased
and Russophobic’, unlike ‘Western’ experts who positioned themselves as ‘noble,
rational, impartial, qualified and civilised’ (Hendl 2022: 70). It was rare (but not
impossible) to encounter spaces where emotions were neither silenced nor instrumentalised for public performance. For example, at a presentation of a book on
Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
fascism in Russia (Garner 2023), an audience member from a country that had also
experienced Russian aggression ended their remarks with an apology for being emotional. The book author responded that no one should apologise for being emotional
because what was happening was ‘fucked up’. This was an unusually straightforward affirmation of what Ukrainians (or Georgians, or Syrians) thought of the world
around them.
Another aspect of tone self-policing entailed being careful not to emphasise too
much the policy failures by the ‘core West’ that had enabled the Russian aggression. Ukrainian scholars were wary of being perceived as ungrateful for the military, economic, and diplomatic support provided to Ukraine. Yet tone (self)policing prevented the broader scholarly community from benefitting fully from unique
perspectives that Ukrainian researchers have. It also perpetuated the fiction that ‘full
impartiality and detachment’ is possible or desirable in research on violence and
injustice (Vogel and Musamba 2022, 8). The subconscious work of checking if public or scholarly arguments were ‘too much’ made Ukrainian researchers slower at
their work in times when the speed at which research is ‘produced’ is privileged
(Stavrevska et al 2023; Kessi et al. 2020). Furthermore, when Ukrainians researchers self-policed their tone or did not intervene to correct misconceptions about their
country, it left them with a feeling of guilt for not defending the Ukrainian cause
(Kurylo 2023). Yet speaking candidly risked alienating research communities that
could be expected to offer sympathy to the Ukrainian cause, as I explore below.
Sympathy and solidarity
Ukrainian voices did not always find a sympathetic reception in circles that may
describe themselves as ‘critical’, ‘postcolonial’, or ‘feminist’ (Kurylo 2023;
O’Sullivan and Krulišová 2023; Sonevytsky 2022; Hendl 2022). As Mälksoo’s
(2021b) argued, Central and Eastern Europe’s (CEE) ‘experience with colonialism
and imperialism [is] too distinct from that of the global South to be an organic ally
in the debates on decolonising knowledge production in IR’. Therefore, the ‘critique
of postcolonial inclusion’ often excluded CEE (Hájková 2022: 101).
However, some voices in critical scholarship recognised that ‘Ukraine should be
supported in its struggle against occupation and genocide on the grounds not only
of human rights but of national self-determination and opposition to imperialism,
colonialism and land grabbing’ (Hall 2023, 42). Yet there were also voices urging
Ukraine to give up in the mistaken hope for a return to the pre-February 2022 era of
complacency and ignorance about Russian imperialism. Sometimes, these calls were
made in the name of global (food) security, or because Ukrainians were paternalistically seen as incapable of seeing their own best interest or knowing history, as the
phrase ‘all wars end at the negotiating table’ exemplified (clearly, not all cases of
war termination are negotiated settlements).
Additionally, the (justified) focus on ‘Western’ crimes created a situation in
which ‘the biased focus on western perpetrators or even subtle anti-Americanism
K. Oksamytna
has prevented exposure of Russia as an imperial actor’ (Düvell and Lapshyna 2022:
210).2 The restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, demanded by the 141-to-7
majority in the General Assembly, was framed as benefiting only the US. This led
to such bizarre developments as the May 2023 resolution of the UK University and
College Union that called, among other things, upon the UK government to stop
supplying weapons to Ukraine,3 which would significantly undermine Ukraine’s
ability to continue its self-defence. I do not know if during the Battle for Kyiv, British NLAWs or American Javelins stopped Russian troops 40 kilometres from the
house where my parents live, so every time I hear about the ‘West’ allegedly ‘pumping Ukraine with weapons’, I flinch.
Furthermore, critical studies often juxtapose themselves with ‘liberal’ worldviews and question ‘core Western’ notions and institutions. Again, with the crucial
disclaimer that I can only speak about some Ukrainians, many in Ukraine experienced liberalism and capitalism in ways that differed from the ways in which they
were experienced in both the ‘core West’ and the ‘Global South’. The standard narrative is that Soviet economic stability, even if it was coupled with unfreedom, gave
way to the ‘wild 1990s’ from which Ukraine struggled to recover. In reality, during
the last decades of the Soviet rule, Ukrainians, unless part of nomenklatura, endured
shortages of basic goods, not ‘only’ political or cultural repression. While the 1990s
were undoubtedly difficult (as the result of the dismantling of the Soviet colonial
economy aimed at preventing self-sufficiency of its republics), decades of economic
growth followed, barring a drop in Ukraine’s GDP due to the 2008 financial crisis
and an even steeper decline due to the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2014.
While poverty and the lack of social protections in Ukraine were serious problems
that governments worked to address, in 2017, Ukraine was the world’s most equal
country by the Gini index. The examples of Lithuania and Estonia, whose GDP
per capita is higher than that of Spain or Portugal, underscored the transformative
impact of the end of Soviet communism in CEE.
Thus, Ukraine’s experience with liberalism and capitalism differed from that of the
‘Global South’, which endured legacies of European colonial extraction, or the ‘core
West’, which in some cases entailed extreme wealth accumulation by the ultrarich at
the expense of racialised poor. By contrast, in independent Ukraine, many found a
degree of economic independence and prosperity after previous generations had suffered from Soviet expropriation of property that targeted Ukrainians with brutal force,
including through genocidal violence in the 1930s. Both Soviet and Nazi symbols are
banned in Ukraine (as well as in several other CEE countries), so encountering hammer and sickle in public spaces came as a shock to Ukrainian students or researchers displaced to the UK. Liberalism is perceived favourably by most Ukrainians (after
all, Zelenskyy’s party is liberal) as they associated it with rights-enhancing policies.
2
On the long history of denying and downplaying non-Western imperialism and colonialism, see
Lachlan McNameeis, ‘Settler Colonialism’, Aeon, 5 October 2023, available at https://aeon.co/essays/
settler-colonialism-is-not-distinctly-western-or-european (viewed 5 October 2023).
3
For coverage of the events, see Hamish Morrison, ‘UCU Sparks Row With Call to Stop Sending Arms
to Ukraine’, The National, 29 May 2023, available at https://www.thenational.scot/news/23554258.ucusparks-row-call-stop-sending-arms-ukraine (viewed 29 September 2023).
Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Therefore, the narratives that attributed all the world’s ills to liberalism and capitalism
(see Makarychev and Nizhnikau 2023) did not resonate with all Ukrainian researchers and activists. The expectation that scholars from Southestern, Central, or Eastern
Europe have a special interest or expertise in Marxist theory (e.g. Alejandro 2022)
might create one more pigeonhole into which researchers from CEE are placed, leading to disappointment when they do not conform to those expectations.
Scholars on the political left also harbour a distrust of nationalism. While postcolonial scholars recognise the role of national resistance against foreign domination (see
Törnquist-Plewa and Yurchuk 2019 for the application of Fanon’s notion of ‘anticolonial nationalism’ to Ukraine), many are still wary of nationalism, including wartime
Ukrainian nationalism. CEE in particular is often seen through the lenses of far-right
ideologies (O’Sullivan and Krulišová 2023), and countries outside the ‘core West’ are
in general suspected of being prone to nationalism of the exclusionary kind (Dudko
2023). Yet this is not the case for mainstream contemporary Ukrainian nationalism,
which, as Onuch and Hale (2022) document, is characterised by civic attachment to
the Ukrainian state and not rooted in language, ethnicity, or enmity towards any group
(except for, I must add, the groups involved in the ongoing armed aggression against
Ukraine). In this way, Ukrainians’ lived experiences may stand in the way of their
inclusion in scholarly communities that should be sympathetic to a country fighting
a foreign invasion. This is especially unfortunate given that the postcolonial scholarship on foreign interventions can deepen our understanding of the imperial nature of
the Russian invasion (Oksamytna 2023; see Kušić 2021 for another example).
Concluding reflections
Having outlined several barriers that Ukrainian scholars may face, practically and
intellectually, in generating knowledge on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I suggest several ways of strengthening dialogues between different research communities. First, there are laudable initiatives by Ukrainian activists, journalists, and artists to build connections with survivors of war, imperialism, and mass atrocities in
other regions of the world. Late Victoria Amelina, who brought Colombian writers
and journalists to the frontline regions of Ukraine, was one such example. Another
example was the invitation of Peter Biar Ajak, a South Sudanese activist, to the
Ukrainian Spaces podcast, where a fascinating discussion took place on how the
Yalta Conference of 1945 has a similar meaning for CEE as the Berlin Conference
of 1884 has for Africa.4 Such initiates can make a valuable contribution to building
global solidarities. Collaborations and co-authorship between scholars based in, or
working on, the ‘Global East’ and the ‘Global South’ would be productive, despite
the career incentives for each research community to work with academics in the
‘core West’. In case research funding is redirected towards the study of the ‘Global
4
Maksym Eristavi and Valeria Voshchevska, ‘South Sudan, We See You, with Peter Biar Ajak’, Ukrainian Spaces, 16 November 2022, https://podcastaddict.com/ukrainianspaces/episode/148548275.
K. Oksamytna
East’, those who work in or on the region should find ways of maintaining or developing dialogues and collaborations with scholars of and in the ‘Global South’.
Yet there are also risks that Ukrainian researchers who chose to work on Ukraine
might get sidelined by large international teams for whom the war is just another
case study – of military aid flows, the economic impact of war, or wartime sexual
violence.5 When this ‘new academic gold rush’ (Tsymbalyuk 2023: 9) begins – most
likely the very moment Ukraine is deemed safe for fieldwork – Ukrainians who will
agree to participate in surveys, focus groups, and interviews will find themselves in
the position of providers of research data, being asked potentially trauma-inducing
questions, such as whether they ‘feel Russian’ or about their wartime experiences.6
‘Local’ Ukrainian researchers who will agree to work as fixers or translators will
find themselves overworked while reliving the horrors of the war, which is a typical occurrence across ‘post-conflict’ settings (Mwambari 2019). Particularly vulnerable groups of Ukrainians, for instance, children who have survived Russian abduction, might become over-researched. In order to prevent such negative repercussions
of studying the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as other conflicts, academics
need to continue looking for ways to do research in more empathetic, responsible,
and self-aware ways.
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K. Oksamytna
Dr. Kseniya Oksamytna is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of International
Politics at City, University of London. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the Conflict, Security,
and Development Research Group at King’s College London. Her research interests are international
organisations (in particular, decision-making, resourcing, and inequalities in international bureaucracies)
and peace operations. She is the author of Advocacy and Change in International Organizations: Communication, Protection, and Reconstruction in UN Peacekeeping (Oxford University Press, 2023).