Pax McDonaldica before the storm: From geopolitical fault‐line to urbicide in Mariupol, Ukraine

Abstract

Until 24 February 2022, when Russia launched its full‐scale attack on Ukraine, Mariupol, like many other Ukrainian government‐controlled cities in the country's eastern regions, was trying to reinvent and rebrand itself as a modern European city. But it was missing something: the golden arches, that ubiquitous symbol of globalisation that can be found in almost any medium‐sized city in Europe. Because McDonald's restaurants are perceived as powerful symbols of global capitalism and of Western or American culture, the establishment of new McDonald's restaurants has sometimes been challenged – even violently – by nationalist or anti‐globalist forces. In Mariupol, which lost its status as a ‘McDonald's city’ at the beginning of the Donbas war in 2014, this was not the case. In this intervention, I describe how the restaurant was a symbolic centrepiece of local debates taking place in this geopolitical fault‐line city, where deep divisions surrounding foreign policy and geopolitical preferences carried the potential for volatile and unpredictable urban conflict, trumping most frictions related to the city's diverse ethno‐national structure. In its role as globally signifying flagship, McDonald's had generated an area of popular and political consensus – a Pax McDonaldica – while also acting as a (welcome?) distraction from a low‐intensity war that had already lasted for eight years. This all came to an end when Russia attacked Ukraine, destroying much of the city, killing man thousands, forcefully displacing or deporting hundreds of thousands, and terrorising those left behind.

Strategies of prosociality: Comparing Nordic and Slavonic altruism toward Ukrainian refugees

“…How people self-identify as belonging to the Western or Russian cultural spheres is a stronger predictor for their sympathies. The war in Ukraine is by many perceived as a conflict of distinct civilizations that has an impact on the future of Eastern European borderlands ( Gentile, 2022 ). In the West, the Russian threat has motivated a stronger sense of European identity, but there is a marked difference is European societies’ response to the war, depending on their proximity to Russia and the size of their Russian minority population ( Gehring, 2022 ).…”

Vulnerable Women: Negotiations Among Migrant Women in the Aftermath of the Ukraine War

“…Some, such as Alina, underscore that they also had unfinished business in Ukraine (obtaining a degree certificate from the university where she had attended), while others were much more eager to leave at any moment. Perhaps that is because the degree of relative physical safety/non-safety differs between the regions of Ukraine (Gentile, 2022).…”

“…Russia's war in Ukraine, which started mostly as a "smooth" Russian annexation of Crimea in early 2014 and small-scale military conflict in the Donets Basin (Donbas) region the same year, has had dire consequences for Ukrainians and to lesser extent for Russians (Mykhnenko, 2020). Some of its major consequences include a large death toll of soldiers and civilians, millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs), overseas refugees, severe injuries, war trauma, destroyed infrastructure and cultural monuments, increased energy and food prices, as well as a rife conflict between Russia and Ukraine that will probably not be over in the foreseeable future (Boman, 2023;Gentile, 2022;Mykhnenko, 2020). On a broader scale, the war increases geopolitical and military tensions, especially between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Russian federation.…”

“…Politically, Ukraine is since 1991 a democratic republic, but like many other post-Soviet nations it has been plagued by widespread corruption and authoritarian elements (Kulyk, 2018;O'Brien, 2010;Sabatovych, 2017;The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2020). Nonetheless, there is a willingness to be integrated into a larger Europe, the European Union in particular (Gentile, 2015(Gentile, , 2022.…”

“…That implies that more than a quarter of its civilian population has fled since 2014, with the largest share leaving in 2022. In addition, tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have died, and large additional numbers of civilians have been forced to stay in occupied territories (Boman, 2023;Eurostat, 2023;Gentile, 2022).…”