Ukraine Lab: Global Security, Environment, and Disinformation Through the Prism of Ukraine

The impression one might get at first glance from Ukraine Lab is that this book represents a highly technical, scientific perspective to the study of Ukraine. The collection of essays that compose it is however far from that. The Lab provides a quite innovative approach: showing the key role of Ukraine for the understanding of world politics through the powerful tool of storytelling.

Ukraine Lab is the product of an online literary residency project held in the summer of 2022, run by the Ukrainian Institute London in partnership with PEN Ukraine and the Ukrainian Institute in Kyiv. The editor and curator of the residency, Sasha Dovzhyk, makes a compelling point right at the outset: what is happening in Ukraine can be understood as a “prism” through which global problems appear in a magnified way. Like an actual burning lens, the Ukrainian experience can serve to broaden our knowledge regarding acute global challenges: disinformation, the return of imperialism, environmental and climate crisis. Ukraine has indeed been “the first to face and, at times, set in motion processes that have worldwide consequences”: the site of the worst nuclear catastrophe in history, the country to spark the collapse of the Soviet Union and to stand up to its neo-imperialist successor, now the primary target of the Kremlin’s troll farms and disinformation campaigns. Against this background, it is certainly no overstatement to say that understanding the Ukrainian experience means to deepen our understanding of world politics and broaden our ability to envision solutions to its key problems.

The message at the heart of the book is first delineated by Rory Finnin with the story of the deliberate, targeted strike on a library and museum dedicated to Ukraine’s philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda (1722–1794). Amid the rubble the statue of Skovoroda remained singed, but unbowed, symbolizing that “out of the horror of a brutal, unprovoked invasion can come defiant knowledge. From the fog of war, philosophy can still emerge.” The urgency of learning from Ukraine (instead of just learning about it) is indeed a compelling point, tackled by a collection of essays that relate in very diverse ways to the identified key challenges: war, environment and disinformation. Among these challenges, the war is of course not only the most important one, but also the underlying transversal issue that defines the main theme of all contributions, illustrating the extent to which the war affects all spheres of social and political life. In this context, the main advantage of the tool of storytelling comes into play: we learn about things like occupation through the description of human experiences.

Kris Michalowicz’s essay “Luhansk, Stolen,” for instance, tells us in a very personal way how it feels like to have an occupation army change the character of your hometown entirely. It bears witness to the variety of awful things that happen and lead to a place “starved by drunks who sang dead men’s songs and flew the flag of a fictitious place.” However, we also learn of the important role that humour plays as an utterance of resistance in Ukrainian society through the personal accounts in Sofia Cheliak’s piece “Ukrainian Lottery.” These experiences indeed “ask us to step out of our position and consider events from another side” and see the actual people that build resilience in and with their actions.

What is perhaps even more interesting is that the contributions also play with perspectives, calling into question our own role as spectators in the “Theatre of War,” as beautifully shown in Olesya Khromeychuk’s contribution. In writing a play about her own brother’s death, restoring her own agency in the narrative of war, she creates a warzone in the safety of the theatre, turning the audience from “passive spectators into active witnesses.” Olena Kozar’s essay “How Do You Know?” similarly calls into question central aspects regarding the challenge of disinformation: how do information flows work and how can we attain real knowledge? This central question is answered through a personal account set in an underground garage with people devoid of the possibility of attaining life-changing news during the battle for Kyiv. A perspective that really highlights the lifeline that information flows represent for us in moments of crisis.

Another important aspect of (dis-)information—how our attention and emotions are manipulated—is tackled by Phoebe Page’s piece “On Which Side?”, which makes the important point that Russian propaganda usually is build upon what is left out. Those unfamiliar with the long history of Russian colonial violence against Ukraine very often lack essential frames of reference when it comes to understanding the causes of the war. Western audiences tend to rely on their learned frames of reference to fill these blanks: “From old-school Realism to radical pacifism, they will apply outdated theories of international relations to explain Russia’s aggression in ways that make sense to them.” By failing to acknowledge the perspectives that shape our understanding, however, we might very easily “fall into propagandists’ hands.” In changing our perspective as we learn from the Ukrainian experience, the bitter truth becomes apparent that pacifism can indeed be considered “a privilege for the peaceful and the empowered.”

By applying an environmental perspective, the “burning lens” furthermore magnifies the enormous relevance of the environmental dimension in this war. Kateryna Iakovlenko’s contribution “Black, White, and Colourless” tells the story of the war-ravaged industrial region of Donbas through the lens of the elements that shaped it: coal, salt, and gas. In “The Kyiv Thickets” Jonathon Turnbull takes us on a journey through the many wild and green spaces in Ukraine’s capital, highlighting the political potential of these spaces. The relevance of the environmental dimension is further illustrated by the fact that Russian crimes against the environment in Ukraine contributed to our understanding of what constitutes the very nature of a crime. In 2021, an independent expert panel’s proposal suggested to adopt “ecocide” as a new, fifth crime into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. We hence learn from these contributions that environmental spaces are at high risk but also provide room for envisioning solutions.

Ukraine Lab ultimately offers an extraordinary and incisive perspective that enables us to understand the many dimensions of this war, its consequences, but also the potential it offers: to change our perspective and thus our ability to develop solutions to key problems in world politics. With its innovative approach, the “lab” forces us to reflect on our own role as bystanders and at times enablers. Learning from the Ukrainian experience means to understand that Ukrainians are not just engaged in their own battle for survival as a state, but that this fight is the fight for the future of democracy worldwide. Or to put it in the words of its editor: “We are all bearing witness to this fight. The responsibility is ours.”