Who should Ukraine build alliances with and how should Ukraine do it? Tamara Zlobina, PhD, head of the Gender in Detail expert resource discusses decolonial solidarity and the West-centric discourse that can sometimes preclude foreigners from understanding Ukrainians.
This text is written based on an online discussion “Looking for alliances: solidarity and cooperation in times of war” that took place in October 2022 and was moderated by a writer and translator Viktoriia Narizhna for the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture (DCCC).
Together with the audience, the speakers explore why the Ukrainian experience is sometimes misunderstood in the West, why the West-centric world does not allow decolonial scholars to critique Russia, what Zelenskyy’s team has accomplished in terms of ensuring that the international community listens to Ukraine, and who Ukrainians should build solidarities with in the future.
Tamara Zlobina: “We have to build international structures that are appropriate for the 21st century”
Even though the war goes on, we should not put our lives on pause. On the contrary, we must live more actively: we must live through these difficult, enduring, and traumatic events that change everything and we must quickly digest these events mentally, reflect on them, and react to them. We are now people who have liminal experience — and because of this we are those who can come up with new approaches that, I hope, will come in handy for humanity in the future. We must do it all to prevent similar wars and tragedies from happening in the future.
As we start this discussion about solidarity, I am thinking about the differences that exist between us: between those of us who come from a country that was invaded and those who come from peaceful and well-off countries of Western Europe that have not endured attacks or invasions for a really long time, countries that did not have wars on their territory for quite some time, and countries that were the colonizers who oppressed others. This difference impacts our social worlds and contributes to ‘us’ and ‘them’ having different social experiences.
The war has made it clear how profoundly different these social experiences are and how difficult it is for us to find common ground. It is difficult precisely because taking a political stand and building solidarity require effort, meaning that you need to go beyond what is familiar and to really get to know the Other. And people who live in a peaceful and prosperous country, who are doing fine, — they do not want to make these efforts for nothing. They need to be motivated to do it.
This is not to blame Europeans: it’s a deeply human trait and we, Ukrainians, have it as well. We are also trying to save our strength; we don’t want to spend it and make an effort without being prompted. So we must ask ourselves: do we really understand the wars of other countries?
Such an attitude has already become a problem because we all live on a planet that is becoming very densely populated, very small in that way. Our economies, politics, and technologies have become so closely intertwined that living in “one’s own village” or on “one’s own island” is impossible. We may not be interested in the things that seem to be “far away” and “not our concern.” Yet, climate change will spread to the most faraway islands and the nuclear war will reach the most distant villages. And so will migration and technological and resource crises. This is why all of us who live on the planet Earth must come together and build a new society and new international structures that are appropriate for the 21st century. Existing international structures were appropriate for the 20th century but not for the 21st.
Why the narrative of “the most important thing is to end the war” is erroneous
The example of Ukraine nicely shows how difficult it is for people who live in a different context to do this work of solidarity. Let’s recall what happened at the beginning of March 2022, when this horrible phase of the full-scale Russian aggression began.
We saw that the absolute majority of people living in Western countries were speaking out against war. However, the form that these anti-war statements were expressed in was the form of speculative pacifism, such as “no to war,” “war is bad.” This was an easy thing to do. It didn’t require any additional effort. Everyone understands that war is indeed bad and saying “no to war” is good. But we quickly saw that such statements — like “no to war” — are very amorphous. The “no to war” statement leads to the abstract speculative pacifism which then leads to the questions like “Why can’t the warring sides come to the table and negotiate?” “Why can’t Ukraine agree to Russia’s demands? Ukraine wants to not be attacked” or “Ukraine will not win this war anyway because it’s weaker than Russia. Let Ukraine surrender. Why don’t you want to surrender, do you want to be bombed? The most important thing is to save lives. The most important thing is to end the war.”
This abstract pacifism revealed the first important problem at hand: it was easy for people from well-off countries who have the privilege to not have wars on their territory to say that “it does not matter how the war ends—the most important thing is to end the war.”
At the same time, we, Ukrainians, knew that if the war ends while our territories are still occupied, this will mean that people living on those territories endure terror. And that the war will resume in some time when the enemy accumulates resources.
All of us — activists and the general public alike — started saying loud and clear that the statement “the most important thing is to end the war” is erroneous. The most important thing is that Ukraine wins, and the aggressor is punished. A lot of things really depend on how the war ends and who wins.
Peace does not come after war. Peace comes after one of the parties has won the war. Even if some kind of compromise is achieved, that compromise is built on who has won and who is stronger at the end of the war.
On the difficulty of accepting Ukrainian political propositions in the West
It turned out to be very difficult for our Western European colleagues to accept political propositions that seemed logical and commonsensical to us, Ukrainians. These political propositions were difficult to accept even for those who were friends of Ukraine because of the solidarity work that needed to be done. When you say that “Russia is an aggressor, and it must be stopped” — you take a political stand, and that entails responsibility and investing efforts into defending this position even at the risk of losing certain personal resources.
Effort №1 is simply to learn more about the conflict
People need to learn what Ukraine is and how this largest country in Europe came to exist, a country that so many people know nothing about because it has always been in Russia’s shadow. People need to learn that Russia is an empire and that Ukraine was colonized. People need to learn that these aren’t two brotherly nations that hug and kiss — unfortunately, Ukraine and Russia have been and still are sometimes portrayed like that by some ill-informed pacifists.
This was too much of an effort for many people. Thus, some started to cling to Russian propaganda that offers easy and convenient answers about the situation being “very complicated” because Ukraine “bombed Donbas” and “everybody speaks Russian in Ukraine,” and anyway, “Azov are Nazis.” Various media researchers have said it time and again that the thing about the Nazis in Azov is already akin to a self-reproducing meme because the Western media has abused this trope.
Effort №2 is to question one’s own established views
This is an important step to uncover one’s mistakes and misunderstandings. Western Europeans have always liked “the great Russian culture” (e.g., the Pope’s reference from August 2023 — editors). They didn’t understand that it is merely a screen: move it and you will see behind it a corrupt, tyrannical, imperial, and bloodthirsty monster with a murderous history of oppression of other people that is a few centuries-long.
It is an effort to say “Okay, I have always loved Tchaikovsky, but I knew nothing about the genocide of the Indigenous people of Siberia. Indeed, I was deceived by Tchaikovsky: his music was like a candy that you give a child to distract from scary things.”
But it is difficult to renounce something that you consider “yours.”
And it is even more difficult to admit that things that exist in your reality and things that you have grown to rely upon are not as reliable and dependable as you have thought.
Germany is a good example. Its political and economic elites have made huge mistakes. Germany became dependent on Russia’s gas after 2014; this is madness. But everyone participated in this madness. Political and economic elites wanted cheap gas.
Now German elites face a huge crisis, and they need to admit that they were wrong. And German citizens need to admit that they made a mistake by trusting those government officials and elites and by thinking that those officials’ decisions were rational and enhanced the country’s security. It turned out to be a mistake.
Effort №3 is to accept the traumatic truth that the world is unpredictable
Probably this is the most difficult and the most demanding effort because it requires dealing with the human fear of death. To take a stand against traumatic events such as the war in Ukraine and to offer solidarity, we must first accept the traumatic truth that there is no “right” behavior that is a safeguard against all bad things. You may be a righteous person, yet something bad may still happen to you.
It was evident that the unwillingness to accept this traumatic truth led to victim-blaming in the case of Ukraine. People started to voice statements like “But what did Ukraine do to provoke the invasion? Russia couldn’t attack without a reason, could it?”
To sum up: yes, it is a very difficult endeavor. To offer solidarity to those who encountered misfortune or those who are oppressed after accepting this political proposition about unpredictability requires a lot of strength.
There are many other wars and conflicts happening on this planet that we know very little about because we need to make an effort to learn about them, an effort to question our previous knowledge, and an effort to admit that we may have been mistaken or have even wronged someone. In addition, we also often have to fight our own governments in this process.
For instance, Ukraine didn’t vote “Yes” on the UN motion to hold a debate about China’s genocide of Uyghurs. Yes, this vote can be explained by Ukraine’s political maneuvering. But speaking in terms of moral values, this was a huge failure. And, unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a discussion inside Ukraine about it. Is China “too far away” to be worried about this? I have already mentioned that in the 21st century there is no such thing as “too far away.”
Or let’s take an example from the vicinity: did the Ukrainian government and society alike do enough to support the democratic revolution in Belarus in 2020? Did we all do enough? Absolutely not. Back then, Ukraine (and Western countries as well) reacted in a very lethargic and sluggish manner. Now we reap what we sow. What would the Russian war have looked like now had Belarus been a democracy?
How do we build solidarities with people who don’t have our decolonial experience?
We should be persistent in what we do. As feminists, we have been doing this for decades: we have been saying the same thing over and over, determined to persuade others. This can also work with Western Europeans. You take your magic feminist wand or your magic wand of Ukrainianness and start poking people. At first, of course, metaphorical fireworks start to explode in the person’s head and your interlocutors deny everything you say. “You are too emotional, it is all in your head, feminism is malarkey.” People react this way because you’re offering new information, something that they have never considered before. But this reaction also illustrates that you were successful in sowing the seed of doubt in this person’s head. This seed will grow and feed on new information. Feminists have been saying more or less the same thing in different ways and in different places for centuries, and this seed is growing and sprouting.
I think that Ukrainians should act the same way: we should persistently voice our point of view, saying the same thing over and over, hundreds of times, like parrots do. At first, Europeans will have this fascinating reaction of denial. But then they will start to adapt. And in some time, after hearing the same thing again, they will get used to it.
There are not so many Ukrainians on this planet, globally speaking, but we are persistent.
International cooperation: building solidarities and dialogues
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s team uses the same methods in international politics that the civil society has used in Ukraine. We cannot directly influence the authorities, we cannot control them, but as civil society we can create a social environment that the authorities will have to reckon with.
And this is exactly what Ukrainians have done on a global scale. These are the strategies that Volodymyr Zelenskyy used when making speeches at international meetings: his words were directed not at politicians — whose goals may be pragmatic and even cynical — but at their voters.
This Ukrainian diplomacy—multiplied by people’s diplomacy, diplomacy from the bottom, strengthened by the speeches and rallies, and other personal efforts —created a context that already made it impossible to deny Ukraine weapons because such a decision may cause significant reputational damage for politicians.
That is how we did it, and maybe we can do something else in the same way.
Creating a new international organization (an equivalent of the UN, for instance) is like fighting climate change. It is something that seems important, but people also tend to be passive about it because “maybe it’s not necessary, maybe I won’t be able to influence anything about it.” I mean that people may be less motivated in this respect. But on the other hand, maybe by then we would have learned how to create solidarity networks with other countries and how to empower each other. The anti-colonial flame can burn in different countries: in Central Asia, South Caucasus, the Baltic states, and Central Europe. They all know that some things that exist on this planet are very wrong.
I am starting this search for solidarity with openness, a desire to listen to others and look for colleagues and talk to them. I would be happy to attend some conferences or trainings together with activists from different countries. Because now we mostly have Western programs and workshops for Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia about peace and anti-dictatorships. I would like to attend a workshop for Ukraine, Saqartvelo, and Qazaqstan. I also want to talk to people from Latin America and Africa. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about these places. But I think that something very nice can be born out of us all having these conversations together.
It would be great if we, Ukrainians, initiated such events.
This will strengthen our reputation as people who —even during war —initiate the search for solidarity and common ground, as people who want to empower and support others in their anti-colonial struggle even while they literally are at war themselves. Gestures like these will help to counter the Russian propaganda that, unfortunately, is very influential in Africa and Latin America.
The text based on the online discussion was prepared by journalist Mila Moroz.
The views of the author do not necessarily reflect the position of the members of the organisation.