UKR-TAZ

If I counted all the articles arguing that NATO expansion contributed to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, I would be kept up all night. (All are variations on Mearsheimer.)

Can someone convince me that they aren’t all missing one fundamental point: that if NATO had not expanded, we have no idea if that would mean that Russia would not have attacked Ukraine in 2014, or Georgia in 2008 (from which it militarily carved out South Ossetia and Abkhazia), or supported separatists in Moldova (from which it carved out Transnistria in 1992)?

These are all non-NATO countries. Doesn’t the logic suggest that Russia would have, by now, also invaded the three Baltic states as well, if not others?

Since we don’t know that, we are all talking hypotheticals: on one side, the hypothetical that NATO expansion got Russia so mad that they attacked those non-NATO countries; on the other side, the hypothetical that they attacked them precisely because they could still do that without attacking NATO.

Which do you find more plausible?

UKR-TAZ compiles materials helpful for understanding Ukraine, with an emphasis on radical democratic (left-libertarian) perspectives. (See here for more.) That makes it an unusual if not rare space on the English-language internet. To do this well requires help. We are not calling for donations — if you can provide any, please donate to the organizations listed here. Rather, we seek collaborators, who would be willing to collect articles and/or media to be shared here, and potentially contribute original work of an appropriately analytical (or inspirational) nature. If you are interested, please write to the editor, including “UKR-TAZ” in your Subject line. Thanks.

For those with time to educate themselves, the University of Ottawa’s Dominique Arel has compiled a lengthy list of recent and upcoming video webinars featuring scholars in Ukrainian studies, Russian studies, and related fields. (The list of several dozen is hardly exhaustive; the two university panels I’ve been on aren’t there, and I can think of others that could be added.) They are part of the revived Ukraine List “UKL,” which Arel has edited for many years now, with intermittent frequency but quite regularly during the last few Ukrainian “crises,” the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Maidan of 2013-14.

This 504th issue of UKL also includes numerous full-length articles, some of them from pay-walled publications, covering analytical perspectives on the Russian invasion.

A PDF with active links to the entire issue of UKL is found here: https://www.chairukr.com/_files/ugd/ff1dca_a39f811f7a834cf0a7a8960e41b8bc77.pdf

The webinars feature close to the beginning of the document.

I’ve shared some thoughts on the humanitarian dimension of the Russian invasion, in the longer-term perspective of similar and future crises, here.

I’ve given this blog a facelift, mainly to make it more readable, as some readers have complained over the years about the legibility of the white text on a black background, and especially the grey quoted text. But I also felt it was time to brighten and enliven it, in the spirit of підбадьорювання (pidbadioriuvannia, enlivening, enspiriting, as in lifting up one’s spirits during times of war or struggle); and because the old theme didn’t work well with the “categories” (see right-hand sidebar). I’ve also reorganized the categories to make them more useful. Comments welcome.

Cross-posted from Immanence…

The Washington Post reports that “Ruthenium-106, named after Russia” has been wafting all across Europe.

Two quick observations here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Inside Russia’s social media war on America (Time)

The Great British Brexit Robbery (Guardian)

Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War (The New Yorker)

The information war is real, and we’re losing it (Seattle Times)

Writing in The Nation, Jared McBride raises some important questions about the uses of (and control over) history in wartime Ukraine.

Marci Shore’s “Reading Tony Judt in Wartime Ukraine” indirectly, but provocatively, answers them.

Andrei Portnov’s “On Decommunization, Identity, and Legislating History, from a Slightly Different Angle” provides a balanced perspective on the same issues.

Links to various articles relevant to the topics explored on this blog (I may add to this list, so please check back periodically):

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/17/how-we-know-russia-shot-down-mh17.html

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/07/13/open-source-information-reveals-pro-kremlin-web-campaign/

http://voxukraine.org/2014/10/01/trust-and-prejudice/

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-right-wing-parties-is-wrong?utm_content=buffer0240a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.VXjEqPKHSh4.facebook

http://culture.lb.ua/news/2015/05/08/304258_filosofi_tsitiruet_putin_.html

https://www.opendemocracy.net/denis-gorbach/struggle-for-progressive-politics-in-ukraine

http://krytyka.com/en/articles/country-war-love-excerpts-donetsk-diary

http://rbth.com/opinion/2015/02/05/the_real_leviathan_43475.html