Class or regional cleavage? The Russian invasion and Ukraine’s ‘East/West’ divide

Class, values, and revolutions in the Russia-Ukraine war

“…In recent publications I argued that this escalation was a result of the profound asymmetry in political capacity between the Western and Eastern political camps in post-Soviet Ukraine (Ishchenko 2023a). Particularly in the fi nal stages, the latter camp failed to articulate an attractive nation-building project for Ukraine that would be compatible with the Minsk accords and that could be supported by civic mobilization, a project that should have been off ered from within Ukraine rather than one being perceived as externally imposed by Russia (Ishchenko 2023b).…”

“…In earlier work I have suggested that this asymmetric political dynamic of post-Soviet class confl ict lies behind the Russia-Ukraine war and is crucial for understanding why Putin resorted to the full-scale invasion at all, why he could not rely on soft power in Ukraine, and why he initially bet on destabilization and rapid decapitation of the Ukrainian state by a limited "special operation" (Ishchenko 2022a(Ishchenko , 2023a(Ishchenko , 2023b. Ukrainian identity and "values, " then, is a very dynamic, contested, and slippery terrain, in contrast to what a lot of commentary assumes.…”