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Sharing my recent papers that develop a class perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war:
• Class or regional cleavage? The Russian invasion and Ukraine's 'East/West' divide (European Societies)
• The Minsk Accords and the Political Weakness of the “Other Ukraine” (Russian Politics)
• Class or regional cleavage? The Russian invasion and Ukraine's 'East/West' divide (European Societies)
• The Minsk Accords and the Political Weakness of the “Other Ukraine” (Russian Politics)
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
New Book Review on BRAVE NEW EUROPE
Towards the Abyss – Ukraine from Maidan to War by Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko
Reviewed by Branko Milanović @BrankoMilan
braveneweurope.com/geopolitics/to…
#Ukraine #UkraineWar #Maidan #Geopolitics #Politics #USA #Fascism #Corruption #Russia
Towards the Abyss – Ukraine from Maidan to War by Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko
Reviewed by Branko Milanović @BrankoMilan
braveneweurope.com/geopolitics/to…
#Ukraine #UkraineWar #Maidan #Geopolitics #Politics #USA #Fascism #Corruption #Russia
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Is it now fine for left-wing media to write that the “chief beneficiary of support for Ukraine is Europe,” not with a critical but with a positive spin?
And, of course, not “Europe,” but the fascisizing centrist elites of the EU and other social groups clinging to the ional order, allied with Ukrainian comprador elites and nationalists to the detriment of the Ukrainian majority, who bear most of the suffering and of the cost to the country’s economic and demographic future.
Sure, socialists need their own foreign policy agenda, as the article argues. But it should be based on a solid theory of global change and on concrete analysis of concrete situations in relation to a socialist international strategy, not on abstract clichés from the last century, crudely applied to very different social contexts and serving as ideological obfuscation and legitimation of a national and potentially global catastrophe.
And, of course, not “Europe,” but the fascisizing centrist elites of the EU and other social groups clinging to the ional order, allied with Ukrainian comprador elites and nationalists to the detriment of the Ukrainian majority, who bear most of the suffering and of the cost to the country’s economic and demographic future.
Sure, socialists need their own foreign policy agenda, as the article argues. But it should be based on a solid theory of global change and on concrete analysis of concrete situations in relation to a socialist international strategy, not on abstract clichés from the last century, crudely applied to very different social contexts and serving as ideological obfuscation and legitimation of a national and potentially global catastrophe.
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
New Book Review on BRAVE NEW EUROPE
Towards the Abyss – Ukraine from Maidan to War by Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko
Reviewed by Branko Milanović @BrankoMilan
braveneweurope.com/geopolitics/to…
#Ukraine #UkraineWar #Maidan #Geopolitics #Politics #USA #Fascism #Corruption #Russia
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Azov has not depoliticized. It is seizing the opportunity to place officers loyal to it, coming from an extreme-right background, in control of ever bigger units of the Ukrainian army.
This is a development that has been predictable since the outset in 2014:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
This is a development that has been predictable since the outset in 2014:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
When units come under Azov control, they tend to replace the commanders with trusted Azovites.
For instance, when the Third Army Corps (Biletsky's Azov) took control of the 60th brigade in 2025, they promptly replaced the commander with Dmytro Rogozyuk. Before the war, Rogozyuk in the football ultras scene, which is why he had plenty of Azov friends and quickly joined them after 2022.
Just recently, Biletsky gave Rogozyuk command of the entire 3rd Corps, because Biletsky is now in charge of Army Group Centre, the most important frontline grouping
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We'll see how many draft-age men from Oleshky choose Ukraine
Oleshky truce story will be soon drifting into an clash between infowar groups over how many people will choose to stay on the Russian-occupied side, including inside the city itself, and how many will opt for evacuation to the Ukraine-controlled territory.
While their choices will inevitably reflect all the complexities and contradictions of this war, which mainstream media tend to supplant with simplistic partisan myth-making, the essence of this story is that Russia and Ukraine can cooperate to stop the hostilities all along the frontline, not just at one section.
Oleshky truce highlights the fact that this war is above all a human rights issue, which absolutely trumps all the issues pertaining to geopolitics or especially to the interests of the global war industry parasitising on societies.
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
New Book Review on BRAVE NEW EUROPE
Towards the Abyss – Ukraine from Maidan to War by Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko
Reviewed by Branko Milanović @BrankoMilan
braveneweurope.com/geopolitics/to…
#Ukraine #UkraineWar #Maidan #Geopolitics #Politics #USA #Fascism #Corruption #Russia
Towards the Abyss – Ukraine from Maidan to War by Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko
Reviewed by Branko Milanović @BrankoMilan
braveneweurope.com/geopolitics/to…
#Ukraine #UkraineWar #Maidan #Geopolitics #Politics #USA #Fascism #Corruption #Russia
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In June, the Ukrainian army began offering new contracts, an experiment in reforming mobilization under former Defense Minister Fedorov. Infantry were promised about ten times the average wage. More importantly, service would end after 10 to 24 months rather than drag on until a demobilization nobody can date.
Four months later, according to Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliament’s defense committee, only 8,600 people had signed, and that number includes soldiers already serving. Like the even more lucrative “youth contracts” last year, the “Fedorov contracts” have failed to attract any significant number of volunteers.
Russia, meanwhile, has not launched the new mobilization wave so many predicted after the Duma elections, apparently because there has been no significant drop in the number of volunteers so far.
Why comparable material incentives have worked far better for Russia than for Ukraine is a key question of this war. I argue that the main reason is not an imbalance of resources but an imbalance of state capacity, and of how much people trust the order their states have established. The deepening crisis of the Ukrainian state, which this war is supposedly about, may be the single most important factor deciding its outcome.
Four months later, according to Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliament’s defense committee, only 8,600 people had signed, and that number includes soldiers already serving. Like the even more lucrative “youth contracts” last year, the “Fedorov contracts” have failed to attract any significant number of volunteers.
Russia, meanwhile, has not launched the new mobilization wave so many predicted after the Duma elections, apparently because there has been no significant drop in the number of volunteers so far.
Why comparable material incentives have worked far better for Russia than for Ukraine is a key question of this war. I argue that the main reason is not an imbalance of resources but an imbalance of state capacity, and of how much people trust the order their states have established. The deepening crisis of the Ukrainian state, which this war is supposedly about, may be the single most important factor deciding its outcome.
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Essential point. Whatever the current majority moods about peace and war among Ukrainians, the mobilized nationalist minority has only become more politically influential, enough to override them. This has happened not because of any significant nationalist conversion, but because of massive population displacement in particular. Too many have chosen exit and adaptive loyalty over voice. Those who were more privileged and organized have been amplified, while those who were more plebeian and atomized have become even more politically marginalized. This class dynamic of the war makes the majority of Ukrainians something like hostages in our country.
12/14 This majority-minority dynamic is not new. It has shaped Ukrainian politics since Maidan in 2014. What is changing is demography. Emigration, displacement and wartime population losses is increasing the relative political weight of the most mobilised constituencies.
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
My review of V.Ivashchnko's book in Korean (the latest Substack)
전후 우크라이나는 한국이 될까, 남베트남이 될까 - 참세상
newscham.net/130105/
전후 우크라이나는 한국이 될까, 남베트남이 될까 - 참세상
newscham.net/130105/
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Many experts seriously believe that Putin lectures on Rurik and pechenegi during diplomatic calls and meetings such as the one in Anchorage. I have heard this in conference presentations, in particular. The incapacity to break with completely flawed narratives that help us understand neither the war nor the Russian leadership.
Alas, prime minister Støre tells Norwegian newspaper VG that FT’s sources lied about Putin reading him and Stubb a history lecture during the phone call. He is asking FT to issue a correction.
The story did sound like a typical psy-ops product the warmongering community has been churning out in industrial quantities since 2014. Like madcap narratives about toilets in Russia or mass defenestrations.
meduza.io/news/2026/10/2…
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
New Book Review on BRAVE NEW EUROPE
Towards the Abyss – Ukraine from Maidan to War by Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko
Reviewed by Branko Milanović @BrankoMilan
braveneweurope.com/geopolitics/to…
#Ukraine #UkraineWar #Maidan #Geopolitics #Politics #USA #Fascism #Corruption #Russia
Towards the Abyss – Ukraine from Maidan to War by Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko
Reviewed by Branko Milanović @BrankoMilan
braveneweurope.com/geopolitics/to…
#Ukraine #UkraineWar #Maidan #Geopolitics #Politics #USA #Fascism #Corruption #Russia
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
My latest Substack in Italian translation
Tra la Corea del Sud e il Vietnam del Sud Recensione del libro di Volodymyr Ishchenko “Verso l’abisso: l’Ucraina da Maidan alla guerra”.
fataturchinaeconomics.com/2026/10/tra-la…
Tra la Corea del Sud e il Vietnam del Sud Recensione del libro di Volodymyr Ishchenko “Verso l’abisso: l’Ucraina da Maidan alla guerra”.
fataturchinaeconomics.com/2026/10/tra-la…
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
On Volodomyr Ishchenko's book.
My today's Substack:
Between South Korea and South Vietnam
A review of Volodymyr Ishchenko’s “Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War”
branko2f7.substack.com/p/between-sout…
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An explainer of what the Russian demand for a return to the pre-1997 NATO actually means.
Let’s also recall how the Russian proposal of December 2021 was widely believed, especially by experts, to be another sham, because Putin had supposedly decided on the invasion years ago, obsessed as he is with destroying the Ukrainian state and identity. Wasn’t it obviously insane to demand that NATO roll back to its pre-1997 positions?
And now these “outlandish” demands from a “sham ultimatum” may come to the negotiating table, because Russia is simply winning an “irrational” war.
#intellectual_crisis in the post-Soviet expert field.
Let’s also recall how the Russian proposal of December 2021 was widely believed, especially by experts, to be another sham, because Putin had supposedly decided on the invasion years ago, obsessed as he is with destroying the Ukrainian state and identity. Wasn’t it obviously insane to demand that NATO roll back to its pre-1997 positions?
And now these “outlandish” demands from a “sham ultimatum” may come to the negotiating table, because Russia is simply winning an “irrational” war.
#intellectual_crisis in the post-Soviet expert field.
1/6 The point about the 1997 posture is frequently misunderstood. It's not about national troop strengths or NATO membership, but foreign deployments. It echoes Russia’s Dec 2021 draft agreement, Art. 4: no foreign forces and equipment beyond the 1997 levels in European states.
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Some here ask why the comparison with Euromaidan. Consider who benefits most politically, whose interests and which agendas are amplified the most. This bears no direct relation to who the protest participants are and what they “want.”
Europe’s mainstream tends to see Gen Z student victory in Serbia through the lens of coloured revolutions and geopolitically-motivated regime change.
But it might be more apt to look at it in the context of the fledgling pan-European youth movement that threatens the mainstream itself. A continental Euromaidan.
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Exactly. Part of the meaningless inflation of the concept of “revolution” comes from a crude way of distinguishing democracies from autocracies in liberal political science, as if they were governed by qualitatively different political processes. In reality, Serbia has proved to be a more functional democracy than neighboring Romania, which simply annuls “wrong” election outcomes by security services, or than a somewhat more distant "democracy" where elections are postponed indefinitely. Perhaps it has even been more functional than some countries farther "west," ruled by abysmally unpopular leaders, where years of massive protests lead to no political shift in the direction of their demands, or are simply overruled by European institutions.
It also shows that Serbian events are not just a “revolutionary” end of the local “regime,” but manifest a crisis of democracy of much broader relevance.
It also shows that Serbian events are not just a “revolutionary” end of the local “regime,” but manifest a crisis of democracy of much broader relevance.
Incumbents losing elections is the definition of democracy, read some Przeworski people.
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
Two very important clarifications of my review by @Volod_Ishchenko.
Thank you very much, @BrankoMilan, for the extended review of my book and for highlighting my class analysis of the post-Soviet region! Your analysis of political capitalism was obviously a big inspiration!
Two small notes. First, I do not see the far-right nationalists as a “class.” I see them rather as the radical wing of the “Western” camp in Ukrainian politics. These two articles, as well as my chapter with Don Kalb in the Backlash book (Pluto, open access), clarify this better:
x.com/Volod_Ishchenk…
plutobooks.com/wp-content/upl…
Systematic empirical studies of the Ukrainian far right from a class perspective are basically nonexistent. I would say that they draw their rank and file from poor youth but, politically, they are sometimes aligned with the comprador bourgeoisie and intellectuals, and sometimes with opportunistic “pro-Western” oligarchs, while also overlapping heavily with criminal business and the security services. Strengthened after the war, they may play a sovereign, autonomous role in Ukrainian politics.
Second, Soviet Ukrainians have not been “totally eliminated.” We lost anything resembling political representation through betrayal, repression, and exile, and have not yet found or built a new one. We exist, but have been marginalized in the public sphere.
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Volodymyr Ishchenko retweeted
"It is not the discussion of the war that I found most remarkable but the fact that it is the first, or surely one of the first, books about the post-socialist societies that tries to define the class structure of such societies and to take it as an explanatory tool in order to better understand political and economic coalitions."
My today's Substack:
Between South Korea and South Vietnam
A review of Volodymyr Ishchenko’s “Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War”
branko2f7.substack.com/p/between-sout…
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Thank you very much, @BrankoMilan, for the extended review of my book and for highlighting my class analysis of the post-Soviet region! Your analysis of political capitalism was obviously a big inspiration!
Two small notes. First, I do not see the far-right nationalists as a “class.” I see them rather as the radical wing of the “Western” camp in Ukrainian politics. These two articles, as well as my chapter with Don Kalb in the Backlash book (Pluto, open access), clarify this better:
x.com/Volod_Ishchenk…
plutobooks.com/wp-content/upl…
Systematic empirical studies of the Ukrainian far right from a class perspective are basically nonexistent. I would say that they draw their rank and file from poor youth but, politically, they are sometimes aligned with the comprador bourgeoisie and intellectuals, and sometimes with opportunistic “pro-Western” oligarchs, while also overlapping heavily with criminal business and the security services. Strengthened after the war, they may play a sovereign, autonomous role in Ukrainian politics.
Second, Soviet Ukrainians have not been “totally eliminated.” We lost anything resembling political representation through betrayal, repression, and exile, and have not yet found or built a new one. We exist, but have been marginalized in the public sphere.
Two small notes. First, I do not see the far-right nationalists as a “class.” I see them rather as the radical wing of the “Western” camp in Ukrainian politics. These two articles, as well as my chapter with Don Kalb in the Backlash book (Pluto, open access), clarify this better:
x.com/Volod_Ishchenk…
plutobooks.com/wp-content/upl…
Systematic empirical studies of the Ukrainian far right from a class perspective are basically nonexistent. I would say that they draw their rank and file from poor youth but, politically, they are sometimes aligned with the comprador bourgeoisie and intellectuals, and sometimes with opportunistic “pro-Western” oligarchs, while also overlapping heavily with criminal business and the security services. Strengthened after the war, they may play a sovereign, autonomous role in Ukrainian politics.
Second, Soviet Ukrainians have not been “totally eliminated.” We lost anything resembling political representation through betrayal, repression, and exile, and have not yet found or built a new one. We exist, but have been marginalized in the public sphere.
My today's Substack:
Between South Korea and South Vietnam
A review of Volodymyr Ishchenko’s “Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War”
branko2f7.substack.com/p/between-sout…
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