Knott, Eleanor (2022)

‘If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine’ is the sentiment used by Ukrainian protesters mobilising against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Such a sentiment signifies the stakes of a war where Ukraine is a democratic nation-state fighting for its right to exist against a Russian invasion. Meanwhile, Russia is fighting for a version of Ukraine that is subservient to Russia’s idea of what Ukraine should be as a nation-state: under a Russian hegemon geopolitically, where Ukraine’s national idea and interpretation of history can be vetted and vetoed by the Russian state. While nationalism scholarship equips us to study Russia’s war against Ukraine through the lens of Russian ethnic nationalism and Ukrainian civic nationalism, the ethnic/civic dichotomy falls short of unpacking the more pernicious logics that pervade Russia’s intentions and actions towards Ukraine (demilitarisation and de-Nazification). Instead, this article explores the logics of Russia’s war and Ukraine’s resistance through the concept of existential nationalism where existential nationalism is Russia’s motivation to pursue war, whatever the costs, and Ukraine’s motivation to fight with everything it has.

https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12878 

Katarzyna Karakiewicz-Krawczyk, et. all. (2022)

“The aim of the research was to collect Poles’ opinions about the need to provide humanitarian aid to Ukrainians from the territories of the Russian–Ukrainian war. Capturing feelings of Poles towards Ukrainians during the war is an interesting issue that shows subjective opinions about the existential situation perceived in the space of mutual personal interactions. The results showing opinions on help were collected from a group of 1012 people throughout Poland with the help of an authorial questionnaire. The obtained data shows a positive attitude of Poles to Ukrainians.”

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192013369