What follows is a makeshift reading (and listening) list of what we believe are relevant articles and interviews that give historic context on the invasion of Ukraine and how we at BAK—and a broader international left opposing this and all wars—can express solidarity and exert political pressure right now.
While all texts radically oppose the war, there are also differences in the propositions they engage with as to how to emerge from this horror. Links are provided chronologically in descending order:
Sandro Mezzadra, “Deserting the War,” transversal: disarm*, April 2022.
Olga Bryukhovetska, “Time And Again,” L’Internatioanle, 7 April 2022.
“Don’t Fight for ‘Your’ Country!” Internationalist Perspective, 26 March 2022.
Sergei Loznitsa, “Open letter from Sergei Loznitsa on his expulsion from the Ukrainian Film Academy, ” e-flux, 20 March 2022 (originally published 19 March 2022 on Loznitsa’s Facebook profile).
Thomas Piketty, “The western elite is preventing us from going after the assets of Russia’s hyper-rich,” Guardian, 16 March 2022.
Irina Zherebkina, “Dispatch from Kharkiv National University,” Boston Review, 14 March 2022.
Taras Bilous, “The war in Ukraine and the Global South,” Commons, 14 March 2022.
Emanuele Braga, “Militant Mutualism and the Exit of Empire,” Institute of Radical Imagination, 10 March 2022.
Keti Chukhrov, The NATO Conundrum, e-flux Notes, 10 March 2022.
Gal Kirn, “Against war in Ukraine and the New Imperialism: A Letter of Solidarity with the Oppressed,” LeftEast, 10 March 2022.
Volodymyr Artiukh, “A Ukrainian Socialist Explains Why the Russian Invasion Shouldn’t Have Been a Surprise,” Jacobin, 9 March 2022.
Daria Badior, “Why We Need a Post-Colonial Lens to Look at Ukraine and Russia,” Hyperallergic, 9 March 2022.
Oleksiy Radynski, “The Case Against the Russian Federation,” Prospections “Stand With Ukraine. Standing With the Oppressed” (original published in e-flux #125), 9 March 2022.
“Overcome fear! An appeal by the Ukrainian journal Prostory,” Eurozine, 9 March 2022.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, “Long Read | A means to render our lives believable,” New Frame, 8 March 2022.
Mike Davis, “Thanatos Triumphant,” New Left Review, 7 March 2022.
Polina Godz, “Ukraine Needs a Global Antiwar Movement,” Jacobin, 6 March 2022.
Oleksiy Radynski in conversation with Witold Mrozek, “Interview: Für Putin ist die Existenz des ukrainischen Staates unerträglich,“ Berliner Zeitung (originally published in Gazeta Wyborcza), 4 March 2022.
Anatol Lieven “It’s time to ask: what would a Ukraine-Russia peace deal look like?” Guardian, 4 March 2022.
Vasyl Cherepanyn and Timothy Snyder, moderated by Marta Kuzma, “The Humanity Dialogues: #1 TYRANNY, ARTISTS AND AGENCY: UKRAINE NOW!” Yale MacMillan Center, 4 March 2022.
Jonathan Littell, “War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. Now, it must bring him down,” Guardian, 3 March 2022. Former BAK Fellow 2019/2020 Oleksiy Radynski (filmmaker, Kyiv) alerted us to this article where writer and filmmaker Jonathan Littell argues that the western sanctions need to target the people who actually enable Putin’s actions so that change can be enforced from within.
Vijay Prashad, “In These Days of Great Tension, Peace Is a Priority: The Ninth Newsletter (2022),” Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, 3 March 2022.
Olexii Kuchanskyi, “It is Not the ’Ukrainian Issue,’” TransitoryWhite, 2 March 2022.
Serhiy Zhadan, “’You’ve got to live somewhere you aren’t afraid to die.’ Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry From Kharkiv,” Literary Hub, 2 March 2022.
Vasyl Cherepanyn, “In Kiev is alles grimmig en grijs, het culturele leven is dood,” NRC Handelsblad, 2 March 2022. Vasyl Cherepanyn (director Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv) talks to NRC after having fled Kyiv to Lviv.
Volodymyr Artiukh, “US-plaining is not enough. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes,” Commons, 1 March 2022.
Anders Kreuger, “A Necessary Letter,” KunstKritikk Nordic Art Review, 28 February 2022.
Jolle Demmers, “Wapens? Sancties? Nederland zou moeten aansturen op bemiddeling tussen Rusland en Oekraïne,” Trouw, 28 February 2022.
Ivan Krastev, “We are all Living in Vladimir Putin’s World Now,” The New York Times, 27 February 2022.
Elena Kostyuchenko, “Exodus from Ukraine: Along the refugee route,” n + 1 magazine (originally published in Novaya Gazeta), 27 February 2022.
Ilya Budraitskis, “Should We Have Seen This Coming? Ilya Budraitskis on the Invasion of Ukraine,” Verso, 25 February 2022.
Taras Bilous, “A letter to the Western Left from Kyiv,” Open Democracy, 25 February 2022.
Masha Geesen, “The Crushing Loss of Hope in Ukraine,” The New Yorker, 23 February 2022.
Related
For Prospections “Standing With Ukraine. Standing With the Oppressed,” feminist, social researcher, and peace activist Nina Potarska has kindly given us permission to republish her 2016 text “Maidan and After: State of the Ukrainian Left.”
Oleksiy Radynski writes on the fifth day of war from a suburb of Kyiv for a case against the Russian Federation.
It is the thirteenth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Researcher and art historian Asia Bazdyrieva remains in Ukraine, south of Kyiv with her family. She has shared a diary entry on Instagram for every day of the war so far. Here is her entry for Tuesday 8 March 2022—also International Women’s Day—republished above as images, and below as text-transcript with kind permission of the author.
What follows is a makeshift reading (and listening) list of what we believe are relevant articles and interviews that give historic context on the invasion of Ukraine and how we at BAK—and a broader international left opposing this and all wars—can express solidarity and exert political pressure right now.
We at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, condemn the brutal military invasion of Ukraine, launched by Vladimir Putin.
Within the long-term research itinerary Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–2021), BAK asked artists, philosophers, scholars, and activists from multiple (political) geographies facing contemporary fascisms how they engage with the question of what constitutes non-fascist living.
