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This collection of papers examines the impact of revolution and war on the development of the Ukrainian state and its sovereignty since 2014. Comparative literature on the state shows that aspects of statehood and sovereignty are shaped by war, and that domestic and international dimensions of statehood do not necessarily covary. The four papers in this collection examine these issues in detail. They show that Ukrainian statehood is strengthening internally and that the European Union is providing substantial external help in building the institutions of the Ukrainian state. However, the breakaway territories in Donetsk and Luhansk are also beginning to build some internal aspects of statehood, to go with the massive support they receive from Russia. These competing statehoods may make the impasse in eastern Ukraine even harder to solve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the outcomes of an anti-corruption educational intervention among Ukrainian students based on an online experiment. More than 3,000 survey participants were randomly assigned to one of three different videos on corruption and its consequences (treatment groups) or a video on higher education (control group). The data suggest a high level of academic dishonesty and misconduct among young people, but also a negative attitude toward corruption in general, highlighting the ambivalence of corruption in the country. We find that one video, which presented a thrilling story abut a victim of corruption related to common bribery in an accessible way, was effective in promoting awareness of the negative consequences of corruption. In contrast, the other two treatment videos, which more closely followed the style of TV news or documentaries on corruption, did not generally promote negative attitudes toward corruption. Presenting corruption issues in a catchy way therefore appears to matter for the effectiveness of such interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the pursuit of legitimacy by the self-proclaimed "republics" in Ukraine. While these "republics" are illegal, questions of their legitimacy are commonly discussed almost entirely through Weberian rule-conformity. We argue that this one-dimensional view of legitimacy overlooks the rich context of normative aspects of power relationships. If the occupied Donbas is to be reintegrated into Ukraine, it is essential to understand the perceived legitimation of the political institutions in this region. We use David Beetham's framework of legitimacy—consisting of legality, morality, and consent—to analyze the "republics'" pursuit of legitimacy. Our analysis leads to the proposition that while the "republics" are illegal, their supporters' normative perceptions of the right to govern have ascribed more validity to the fake "governments" than what would have been expected from a legal point of view. Additionally, while a ceasefire between the Russian proxies and Ukraine's forces has reduced violence, it has also levied temporal effect on the legitimation of illegitimate institutions. Our treatment of the process of legitimation over time helps us identify potential strategies of delegitimization should DPR and LPR reincorporate with Ukraine-controlled territory. Without dismantling internal perceptions of institutional legitimacy among inhabitants of nongovernment-controlled areas, a re-integration could not be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable attention has focused on Ukraine as a divided country along ethno-cultural lines. But regional economic differences and trends over time are the primary drivers that influence citizens' wellbeing and likewise contribute to a sense of place. This article focuses on how Ukraine's economic development has unfolded across the country during a time of conflict and how these changes can be understood. Using the framework of state capacity, aggregate data reflective of human security are adduced to illustrate and suggest reasons for these shifting patterns and the implications thereof for a postwar Ukraine. Findings suggest that the spatial realignment of Ukraine's economy has been and will continue to be a function of location, markets, and human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Euromaidan" revolution, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the proxy war in eastern Ukraine through Europe and the West's relations with Russia into crisis in 2014. Five years later, while the domestic scene has stabilized to some extent and Russia's control of Crimea seems unassailable, the war in eastern Ukraine drags on, the status of Crimea is contested, and Ukrainians roundly rejected the government that came to power after the revolution. The papers in this special issue of the journal consider several outstanding issues in Ukraine and in its relations with Russia and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain Ukraine's natural gas and electricity sector reforms, to outline the challenges facing these two sectors going forwards and to identify prospects for renewables. It makes three core arguments: First, the regulatory templates promoted by the European Union do not lend themselves to swift implementation. This is because the EU's approach has been supply-driven, in the sense that it exports regulatory templates already developed within the EU; it is not, therefore, a suitable problem-solving measure for a crisis-stricken country with limited capacities and powerful vested interests. Second, there has been very slow progress made in innovative and creative shifts in Ukrainian energy transition policy, showing a lack of commitment to the transformation and modernisation of energy systems that should in principle be based on the promotion of new business models backed up by reformed political, regulatory and industrial infrastructures. Third, Ukrainian elites have been formally open to the flow of rules as evidenced by a number of agreements concluded between the EU and Ukraine. But, in practice, the pre-existing, deep-seated preferences of those elites have perpetuated the opaque gas trading system, resulting in them being very selective about the rules that they are actually prepared to adopt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses commuting by elderly Ukrainian passengers on tramways and trolleybuses as a symbiosis between human bodies and public electric vehicles. First, aging is presented as an important part of the socio-material order of Ukrainian cities. Then, using ethnographic methods, the research traces how elderly, mostly female, bodies and aging vehicles are singled out as a symbiotic assemblage formed under rigid social assistance policies. Mutual dependencies between bodies and vehicles help them both remain in the city. In the discussion, this symbiotic assemblage is connected to the larger policy and political context of Ukraine in terms of Europeanization. Using assemblage thinking and the notion of symbiosis allows us to see elderly commuters on Ukrainian tram and trolleybuses not as mere end-users of the city but as co-creators of urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a toponymic lens, this article opens insights into Kyiv's rampant, largely unregulated urban growth under neoliberal management, including associated forms of new-build gentrification. Practices of (re)naming are increasingly used to brand places, especially in the real estate market contexts. Theoretically, we discuss the uses of symbolic motif-repertoires, place-spoofing (through name-loans or copied architectural forms, for instance) and local heritage-based autochthonous naming as the ingredients of neoliberal place making and new-build gentrification. Empirically, we analyze 639 names for residential estates in Kyiv and its outskirts, coined in 2010–2020. We classified this corpus into autochthonous and neotoponymic estate names based on their relationship to the existing local toponymy, and then conducted a detailed interpretative analysis of both subsets. Used to attract a specific niche of home-buyers, the main types of toponymic place brands in Kyiv include select autochthonous "prestige names" recycled in the real estate landscape, overwhelmingly Western (North American and above all European) name loans, references to business owners and corporate brands, and evocations of internationally fashionable generic themes of urbanism (from urban greenness to expressions of high social status). Although the revealed toponymic novelties may express the integration of Ukrainian society to the worldwide community of free market economies, such repercussions of these neoliberal place making linguistic practices as symbolic repetitiveness and linguistic Westernization may have potentially adverse effects of enfeebled historicity and increasing placelessness, as well as phenomenological displacement in the Ukrainian capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis, a wave of scholarship resorted to realism and its core assumptions in an attempt to explain Russia's assertiveness. This article challenges these predominant accounts by contending that the co-constitutive link between identity and foreign policy deserves far greater attention to understand Russia's international actions. To this end, it examines the evolution of an underexplored yet central subset of Russia's foreign policy in the post-Soviet space, namely its cultural diplomacy. Concretely, it applies a poststructuralist research design to a textual selection including official documents and Presidential declarations from 2008–2018, semi-structured interviews with policy-makers, cultural operators and experts, and participant observation. The article finds that, between 2008 and 2012, three competing articulations of identity were proposed in Russia's cultural diplomacy, targeting Russian (Russkiy) ethnicity, the country's multi-ethnicity, and its collective memory. However, after the 2012 presidential elections, these were replaced by a new articulation reproducing Russia's identity through a) radicalization of cultural differences (with the West/the EU) and b) negation of alternative identities (within Russia and the post-Soviet space). Amidst increased political contestation with the 2011–12 Russian protests, this hegemonic intervention from the state-level sought to (re-)produce this identity through an antagonistic delimitation of the social and secure the regime's survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ukraine's 2020 local elections showed a radical transformation of the party system through the proliferation of local parties. While extant studies have examined the gradual nationalization of the party system, the rapid increase in party system localization, as observed in present-day Ukraine, has rarely been discussed. Combining qualitative evidence on the 2010s' political processes and quantitative evidence from data analysis of Ukraine's local election results in 2010, 2015, and 2020, this study demonstrates that party system localization was caused by influential mayors who rapidly accumulated power after the Euromaidan. This increase in mayoral authority has three main causes. First, institutional settings such as popular mayoral elections and the relative autonomy of city governments in the state structure provide mayors with unique powers at odds with other regional actors, such as the governors. Second, the decentralization reform initiated after the Euromaidan empowered mayors and city governments. Finally, Volodymyr Zelens'kyi's recruitment pattern of governors and his party Servant of the People's candidate selection process enabled mayors to cultivate their local power bases. This study offers an important implication for the idea of patronalism by indicating the geographical fragmentation of patronal politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a return to the "old" (imperial, colonial) wars aimed at seizing the neighboring state's territories and resources, and the violent assimilation of its population. Russia has changed its objective from gaining political leverage over Ukraine to enlarging its territorial control, based on the geostrategic and geo-economic value of the land. This is because Russia was no longer able to employ its soft power, with a gray-zone conflict effectively keeping Ukraine in its geopolitical orbit. Drawing on fieldwork, process tracing, and document analysis, we explain the de-modernization of the political regime and the economies of previously and newly occupied territories of Ukraine, by the export of Russian institutions and the employment of tactics of societal destabilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of research has identified regional divisions as an important factor in understanding variation in political attitudes and behaviors in Ukraine. This article focuses on the extent to which regional divisions in Ukraine represent a key identity divide. Drawing on unique data from a national survey of residents of Ukraine, quantitative and qualitative evidence indicates that many respondents see their region as an important part of their identity and that the reasons why they do fall into identifiable categories. At the same time, the findings point to challenges in conceptualizing the region in Ukraine as an identity type. These include its contested nature, reflected in a deep divide between those who consider "region" to mean their oblast and those who see it as representing a larger area of Ukraine. These results shed new light on Ukraine's regional divisions and may help explain why the country's notable "regional effect" has not translated into identity-based mobilization along regional lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the regional differences in the perception of companies in Ukraine regarding corruption and informal practices. Topics discussed include the association of the business corruption in the country with the general corruption in society, the definition of corruption, and the existence of differences in the perception of corruption in public institutions.

The article presents an overview of Ukraine's economic dilemma in the aftermath of the recent elections in the country. A former economic advisor to the government and co-chair of the United Nation's Blue Ribbon Commission for Ukraine relates his insights into the causes of three acute problems including inflation, corruption, and the lack of structural reforms. The paper focuses on the state of economic affairs in 2008, which includes data on economic growth and exchange rates. It also discusses the potential consequences of rising food and commodity prices and Ukranian monetary unit peg to the dollar.

Comments on the paper "The Economic Policy of Ukraine After the Orange Revolution," by Anders Åslund, published in the July 2005 issue of the journal "Eurasian Geography and Economics." Criticism of pervasive corruption in the Ukrainian government; Extent of corruption on the society, predominantly in Ukrainian oligarchs, administration and military; Illustration of citizenry's support for some of the government's policies and regulations pertaining to prices, privatization, and organized crime.

Why do some geographical locales experience higher levels of violent mobilization during armed conflicts than others? Existing studies on high-risk mobilization examined economic greed and ethno-nationalist grievances, as well as incentives- and sanctions-based motivations to fight in civil wars. In order to explain violent mobilization beyond the extant theories of participation in civil wars, this article borrows from ethnography, psychology, and anthropology the previously unexplored in security studies concept of "belonging" to a locality. Drawing its empirical insights from unique interview data on mass wartime mobilization, which occurred between March and September 2014 in Ukraine, this study argues that belonging to a particular locale serves as a robust cause of violent mobilization. Using a rare sample of former and active members of pro-government paramilitary battalions from one carefully selected locality in Kyiv, reveals that individuals engaged in high-risk mobilization in the East Ukraine's conflict were influenced by the sense of belonging more than by political or ethnic grievances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are good comparators sharing a common Soviet past, similar cultures and religions, while in the COVID-19 crisis they have pursued quite different policies. Belarus has denied the pandemic and undertaken no measures. Russia played down the epidemic for a long time and then undertook half-hearted and incoherent measures. Ukraine feared the virus and carried out an early and strict quarantine in a centralized policy. While testing has been sparse until recently and death tolls remain uncertain, Belarus and Russia appear to have done poorly in terms of health, while Ukraine has so far done much better. It is too early to judge the economic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the question of Ukraine's societal polarization along the East-West line and the state of cohesion and endurance of its political community. In both political and academic discourses, Ukraine is often characterized as a country split between Western and Eastern regional and societal parts belonging to some wider geopolitical and cultural entities. Moreover, the recent upheavals in the life of the country – Euromaidan Revolution, illegal annexation of Crimea and Russian-Ukrainian war in Donbas – have actualized the allegations about Ukraine as a feeble state structure on the brink of disintegration and collapse. The findings in this study challenge both of these claims and it is argued that Ukraine is not a deeply divided or failed state. In practice, the East-West political polarization line is not clearly defined, but to the extent that it does surface in the political and electoral contests, this line has been moving from west to east since the early 1990s. The shifting of the polarization line implies that political and cultural identities in Ukraine are not fixed and, at the same time, reflects a strengthening cohesion of Ukraine's political and cultural space. These findings are confirmed by the improved and ever-increasing convergence of Ukrainian society following the Euromaidan and Russian military aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to Russia's expectations, military intervention into Ukraine only strengthened the Ukrainian civic nation. As a number of polls demonstrate, since 2014 there is a growing trend that the vast majority of Ukrainians, also in the government-controlled areas of the Donbas, identify themselves, first and foremost, as Ukrainian citizens. Regional and local identity is not their primary choice anymore and there are clear indicators of a strong civic identity that favors a unitary Ukraine. The lack of progress for a solution of the conflict in the Donbas impacts upon Ukrainian public opinion which, in turn, puts pressure on the Ukrainian authorities: there is a wide acceptance of a diplomatic solution to the conflict and readiness for some compromises but the reintegration of the occupied territories should take place according to pre-war conditions, without any federalization of Ukraine. Also, without establishing a stable security regime in the Donbas there is little support for an implementation of the political part of the Minsk-2 agreement. However, closer to the frontline, the more Ukrainians are ready for compromises. The promise of peace by new President Volodymyr Zelenskyy puts a question on what compromises his team may accept and justify in the eyes of Ukrainians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the impact on statebuilding as an aspect of Ukraine's integration with the EU. The Euromaidan had a profound, yet hardly recognized, effect on EU-Ukraine relations, particularly in terms of the EU's subsequent support of domestic reforms in Ukraine. Following the Euromaidan, the EU supported Ukraine's aspirations to enter "economic integration and political association" by concluding an Association Agreement – an agreement which exceeded the capacity of the Ukrainian state to implement it. To increase this capacity, the EU has supported reform of public administration and has provided far-reaching assistance on capacity building in the government. This article posits that since 2014 European integration has become tantamount with (re)building the state structures in Ukraine. Therefore, the significance of European integration for Ukraine goes beyond the implementation of the Association Agreement and extends to root-and-branch reform of Ukrainian state structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "realism" has been invoked often in discussions of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, both to explain what happened and to evaluate potential policy options for the West. This article examines the application of realist international relations theory to the conflict, focusing on two crucial issues. First, before one can apply realist theory to any topic, one must specify what version of the theory one is applying. Whether one adopts "offensive" or "defensive" realism is potentially decisive in determining what policy prescriptions result. If one adopts offensive realism, trying to strike a bargain with Russia makes no sense. If one adopts defensive realism, a deal with Russia is at least theoretically possible. Second, if one adopts defensive realism the key question is whether Russia is a "status quo" or revisionist power. Only if one adopts defensive realism, and if one finds Russia to be a status quo power, does accommodating Russia's demands follow from realist theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia has tried to use economic incentives and shared historical and cultural legacies to entice post-Soviet states to join its regional integration efforts. The Ukraine crisis exposed the weaknesses of this strategy, forcing Russia to fall back on coercive means to keep Kiev from moving closer to the West. Having realized the limits of its economic and soft power, will Russia now try to coerce post-Soviet states back into its sphere of influence? Fears of such an outcome overestimate Russia’s ability to use coercion and underestimate post-Soviet states capacity to resist. Rather than emerging as a regional bully, Russia is trying to push Eurasian integration forward by becoming a regional security provider. The article relates these efforts to the larger literature on regional integration and security hierarchies – bridging the two bodies of theory by arguing that regional leaders can use the provision of security to promote economic integration. Despite initial signs of success, we believe that the new strategy will ultimately fail. Eurasian integration will continue to stagnate as long as Russia’s economic and soft power remain weak because Russia will be unable to address the economic and social problems that are at the root of the region’s security problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the impact of the EU and Russia on domestic change in the gas sector in Ukraine. It seeks to identify the barriers to, and triggers for, Ukraine’s alignment with EU rules against the backdrop of Ukraine’s energy dependence on Russia by focusing on the institutionalization of energy relations. By studying the whole post-Soviet period, this article provides a comprehensive overview of the interplay of domestic and external factors shaping the energy sector in Ukraine and illuminates the often paradoxical effects of external influences on domestic actors’ preferences and strategies. We argue that EU influence was ineffective in overcoming domestic barriers to reforms and that it was Russia’s coercive actions that have led to the adoption of EU rules by Ukraine, despite powerful domestic vested interests and the weaknesses in EU’s policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union (EU) and Ukraine have cooperated on asylum policy for many years with the aim of introducing EU and international standards in Ukraine. Reforms, however, were developing slowly and have accelerated only after 2010. This timing represents a puzzle because the reforms advanced most significantly in a situation when Ukraine’s orientation toward the EU became more reluctant again while it increased toward the Russian Federation. The latter in turn became increasingly hostile toward EU activities in Ukraine and eager to pull Ukraine toward the Eurasian Customs Union as an alternative integration project. The timing of reforms can be explained by paying more attention to domestic forces. On the one hand, these forces operate with some degree of independence from the country’s geo-strategic orientation, responding to sector-specific costs and benefits, and in particular, sector-specific conditionality. On the other hand, the more autocratic rule under former President Yanukovych ended a period of unproductive political muddle and facilitated the adoption of EU rules. Russian influence did not play a role in this particular policy sector, which was thus de-coupled from the broader macro-level developments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information on spatial and partisan parameters, related to several decisions, based on staffing and participating contestants in elections. Topics discussed include failing of participation of required number of staffs, in organizing an elections, overview on political activities of former period in Ukraine and role of electoral commission of Ukraine, in allocation of seats to members, participating in elections.

The article offers information on history of Independent Square , a sacred place in Ukraine. Topics discussed include several protest gathering at Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) including the Euromadian protests, against the Ukrainian president, for absconding Ukraine from participating in membership of European Union, account on the Square's past incidents and sacred regard of square because of deaths and killings of protestors at the place.

The article offers information on sovereignty of Ukraine on several aspects including political, international relations and international laws. Topics discussed include brief account on establishment and history of Ukrainian state, argument on integrity of Ukraine referred as independent state and focus on challenges faced by heritage and ethnographic landscape of Ukraine.