Analysis & Academic #3
Winning the long war, lived religion in Ukraine, seismic data of Russian strikes and more
Hello everyone and welcome to this third issue of ‘Analysis & Academic’, a regular curation of op-eds, academic articles and other analytical works focused on the war in Ukraine.
I first wanted to strongly encourage you to take a look at the upcoming ‘Ukrainian Analytical Digest’ bimonthly internet publication that will be launched this month by the Center for Security Studies (CSS) of the ETH Zurich. The CSS has for years been publishing the ‘Russian Analytical Digest’, a regular source of thought-provoking articles about what’s going on in Russia, so I’m pretty excited to see them focus on Ukraine—and you should definitely subscribe.
Also, and until we get a dedicated podcast section, here are two things worth listening to this week: Stephen Kotkin discussing “How Ukraine Can Win the Peace”, and researcher Catherine Wanner talking about religion in Ukraine for the ‘Eurasian Knot’ podcast.
Op-eds & Analyses
How Ukraine Can Win a Long War
Foreign Affairs | Mick Ryan | August 30
This failing in Western military doctrine is therefore perhaps best exemplified by Ukraine’s current struggle to penetrate Russian minefields in the south. Dense obstacle belts, including minefields, are hardly a new development. But if this defensive scheme is overlaid with meshed civil-military sensors, assessments, and fires, it makes breaching these belts an order of magnitude more difficult. The technologies and tactics of such breaches have not changed in nearly half a century. A new-age Manhattan Project designed to discover new ways to rapidly detect and clear mines would help Ukrainian offensives down the line. It would also assist in clearing mines and unexploded ordnance from vast swaths of liberated Ukrainian territory.
Drones in Ukraine and beyond: Everything you need to know
European Council on Foreign Relations | Ulrike Franke | August 11
Many, possibly the majority, of the drones used by Ukrainian forces were originally designed for commercial purposes or for hobbyists. They are therefore available in large numbers and at low cost, and are easy to use. As they are not built for war, these drones tend not to survive for a long time in the battlespace – but given their price and availability, they are generally dispensable. The Chinese manufacturer DJI produces most of these systems. It officially suspended operations in Ukraine and Russia a few weeks into the war, but its drones, most notably the Mavic type, remain among the most used and most sought-after systems. Individuals have donated many drones and crowdfunding efforts by the public have also allegedly led to the acquisition of thousands of drones.
Ukraine’s Future Isn’t German or Israeli But Korean
Bloomberg | Andreas Kluth | August 30
The West German analogy seems tempting, but is off target. True, Bonn governed only one part of a nation that it still claimed in theory to represent as a whole. But under American, British and French auspices, the West Germans had constituted a new country, the Federal Republic, with fixed borders that all four Allies, including the Soviets, accepted. At the time of NATO accession, there was no fighting. [...] The analogy with Israel may therefore seem more apt, but a closer look reveals equally gaping holes. The American security guarantee became formal only after Israel had already won four wars against its Arab enemies. Rather than fighting the foes on its own soil, as Ukraine is doing, Israel was by the 1970s waging war on theirs. Around that same time, it also built its own nuclear weapons — although it has never confirmed this arsenal. [...] What about the Korean analogy, then? While also imperfect, it may be the best available. Then as now, Moscow and Beijing backed the side of the aggressor (North Korea in 1950), while the US led an international coalition in defense of the victim. In Korea as in Ukraine, a kinetic opening phase gave way, from mid-1951, to a grinding and bloody stalemate. By that time, both the US and the Soviet Union had nukes.
Pushing Ukraine to negotiate now would be disastrous
Chatham House | James Nixey | August 30
Even in the UK, acknowledged by President Zelenskyy as the de facto leader of weapons support for Ukraine, some serious and no doubt well-intentioned voices are telling us that now is not the time to negotiate – but it is time to start preparing for negotiations. However, there is no discernible deeper thought as to precisely what this might entail, while Russia has not offered any indication that it is prepared to concede anything at all. In fact, Putin’s opening position would likely be that Ukraine ought to concede more territory, based on the ‘legality’ of Russia’s annexation of new regions.
Research articles
Open-access articles are marked ✅
Identifying attacks in the Russia–Ukraine conflict using seismic array data
Nature | Multiple authors | ✅
Scientists without borders: lessons from Ukraine
GigaScience | Multiple authors | ✅
[Scholars] staying in Ukraine found themselves in the most unstable and vulnerable situation. Many universities, especially those in the east of the country, are either closed or relocated to safer areas. The budgets of the state-run universities were cut to save funds for the war effort. While the base salaries for teaching are usually maintained, these were traditionally already very low and commonly supplemented by income from funded research and overtime work, which are now dropped [20]. The national research programs have been plagued by the issues associated with the war, and the funding has mostly been cut off or frozen. Despite the dire situation, many researchers in Ukraine continued to maintain their academic and research activities.
The role of social media in facilitating minority mobilisation: The Russian-language pro-war movement in Germany amid the invasion of Ukraine
Nations and Nationalism | Liliia Sablina | ✅
Decentralization and trust in government: Quasi-experimental evidence from Ukraine
Journal of Comparative Economics | Helge Arends, Tymofii Brik, Benedikt Herrmann, Felix Roesel | ✅
A war like no other: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a war on gender order
European Security | Petr Kratochvíl, Míla O'Sullivan | ✅
Gender and sexual equalities are an important part of the EU project, but they are even more centrally posited in the Russian counter-narrative, in which they become the fulcra of the resistance against the spread of Western values and against the Europeanisation both within Russia and without. In this sense, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a simple power grab, but an attempt at countering the centripetal tendencies that are not primarily military, but cultural (despite all the Russian talk about the danger of “NATO expansion”). In this narrative, the fate of Ukraine is central: If Ukraine, the cradle of Russian culture, can undergo an emancipatory transformation, then the identity of Russia as a distinct civilisational project is threatened as well, or so the Russian President seems to believe.
Inscribing security: The case of Zelensky’s selfies
Review of International Studies | Håvard Rustad Markussen | ✅
‘We are at war’: Reflections on positionality and research as negotiation in post-2022 Ukraine
Journal of International Relations and Development | Vera Axyonova, Katsiaryna Lozka
Role Change and Russia's Responses to Upheavals in Ukraine
Foreign Policy Analysis | Damian Strycharz | ✅
In 2005, despite attempts to interfere in the presidential elections in Ukraine, Russia reacted relatively mildly to the Orange Revolution and a new pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko. However, in 2014, Moscow's reaction to the takeover of power by the pro-Western opposition after the Euromaidan Revolution was much more severe. What are the reasons for such different responses to these two comparable events? This paper applies the role theoretical framework, which provides conceptual tools to theorize about foreign policy change (Breuning 2017), to answer this question. It argues that significant changes in international and Russian domestic contexts led to a change in Russia's dominant national role conceptions (NRCs), which contributed to Moscow's more assertive foreign policy, exemplified by divergent reactions to the upheavals in Ukraine.