The intimate and everyday geopolitics of the Russian war against Ukraine

Authors: Maria Gunko, Sven Daniel Wolfe, Olena Denysenko, Dina Krichker, OLga Rebro

Location: Armenia, Norway, Spain, Ukraine

Themes: Affect, Bordering, Geopolitics, Mobility, Violence, War

This Forum publication analyses the Russo-Ukraine war from the micro-perspective of everyday life by scholars who have been personally impacted by the war. Maria Gunko’s contribution focuses on a town in rural Armenia where an abandoned Soviet-era factory is being inhabited and restored by a small alternative community of people fleeing the violence of the war in Ukraine and the oppression of governments in Russia and Belarus. Contextualised within Armenia’s own turbulent post-Soviet history, Gunko examines the micro-politics of this multinational attempt to build a kind of improvised refuge out of the shell of the Soviet built environment.

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Violent faces of the Russian state

Authors: Maria Gunko

Location: Russia

Themes: Infrastructure, Postsocialism, Statecraft, Statehood, Violence

While the war in Ukraine is making the 'fast' spectacular violence of the Russian state increasingly evident, the latter's 'slow' violence has largely remained out of the spotlight. Drawing on various data sources, this essay discusses the different yet co-existing sets of state practices – statecraft and statehood. It portrays a more nuanced picture of state violence expressed by the Russian state both against Ukraine and against its own citizens within Russia.

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