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Articles by Katri Pynnöniemi

1. A MEETING POINT FOR OLD AND NEW BERLINERS “ The need for a welcoming and stable anchor after turbulent times will never change”

   2015, amid the summer of migration, the house was founded by writers Sven and Elke Lager who got access to the building from the City Mission. The wish was to contribute with solutions for the topic on everyone’s lips: refugee integration. By then, Give Something Back To Berlin (GSBTB) had already made us a name in migrant support circles. Since 2013 we had built up a big grassroots movement of volunteering and skill-sharing all over Berlin. GSBTB was by no means a refugee project, it was a migrant led-community project that simply reacted to the current needs of the city. One of the most pressing was for modern and human-centered activism supporting newcomers. Also, meet the refugee helpers: Bärbel Heinrich shares her story when she was imprisoned for helping people escape the GDR.

2. LVIV. A CITY OF LIONS IN THE YEAR OF WAR

   The journey to Ukraine is no longer measured in kilometers. After Ukraine closed its airspace, the trip demands new spontaneous, situational solutions to get there. Instead, travel can be measured by time — at least fifteen hours from Copenhagen to the western Ukrainian border, but it may be up to thirty hours or more. However, the most accurate measurement of the distance to Ukraine today is the level of closeness to all those people who are staying in Ukraine, in their own homes, and do not even think about surrender. From this point, Lviv is closer than ever.

3. The use of children in the Russian aggression against Ukraine

   February 2023 will be remembered for a lavish propaganda event of the Russian government in Luzhniki stadium in Moscow dedicated to the anniversary of the second Russian invasion of Ukraine. This year it was combined with a celebration of the most significant regular ideological commemoration — a day of “The Defender of Otechestvo [the Fatherland]. Using the propaganda transfer technique, Russia frames the invasion as a fight against the “Ukrainian Nazis”, providing parallels with winning WWII, thys inheriting Soviet traditions intended to increase feelings of patriotism and national pride. One of the key narratives promoted by Russian propaganda is the “protection of the people of Donbas”, in particular using propaganda materials with children, especially those deported from Ukraine.

4. The end of Ukrainian radical nationalism is not here – yet THE WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR FAR-RIGHT MILITANCY AND VIOLENCE IN UKRAINE

   Is radical Ukrainian nationalism disappearing? However marginal but playing a decisive role in the resistance against Russian aggression, along with the rest of Ukrainian society, this political movement has suffered terrible losses that raise questions about its ability to maintain itself in the post-war political arena. This forward-looking essay examines the multiple challenges posed by this issue, arguing that the Far-right in Ukraine could perhaps find in the war an undeniable opportunity for a renaissance

5. STREET ART AGAINST WAR WITH STENCIL MARKS AND PAINT CANS IN UKRAINE

   Street artists have demonstrated their condemnation of Russia’s invasion of a neighbor with murals, both in Ukraine and abroad. The most famous of these artists is Banksy. On a wall of what was once a kindergarten, he has sprayed the image of a child in a judo match overcoming a seemingly far more powerful opponent (an adult with some resemblance to the Russian leader). Although such works of street artists in Ukraine sometimes also show Putin, children are a common theme – often a girl with two stiff braids. Some of these works are presented in this essay, considering the role of the child in them, seeking to understand the role of art in protest as an appropriation and reconfiguration of public space.

6. RUSSIAN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENTS. THE HOPE OF EPIPHANY

   The war against Ukraine sank the civil society of Russia into despair. The dreams of turning the country with a centuries long tradition of despotic power and imperialist foreign policy into a peaceful postmodern liberal democracy were brutally crushed. Alongside the tragedy of thousand Ukrainians, this full-scale invasion has meant a defeat of the Russian intellectuals, liberals, and political dissidents who had been trying for many years to persuade themselves and the outside world that the strange reality they inhabited was an inevitable part of being a transitional society. This defeat forced them out of their country. Cursed by their compatriots as “traitors” and by some public abroad1 unwilling to stand up to the criminal regime, the new Russian émigré are now trying to construct a new “Civitas Solis” in exile, a different future for themselves and their country which is supposed to rise in place of the apocalyptic darkness of the present.

7. Protests, anti-war grassroots initiatives and resistance in Russia

   Since the beginning of Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the repression of civil society has gradually intensified in Russia. During recent years political activism has been under threat and pressure, and in the last year activism has largely gone underground due to the escalating level of repression; therefore one sees few mass protests. The Russian authorities have consistently taken restrictive measures against any street protest, and the last permissible form (a single-person action) in the end also turns out to be almost impossible.

8. Alexandra Talaver, coordinator of Feminist Anti-War Resistance: “War represents a culmination in the continuum of patriarchal violence” A conversation based on an e-mail interview with Alexandra Talaver conducted by Yulia Gradskova

   Alexandra Talaver is one of the coordinators of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR), that was promptly launched on February 25, 2022, with a manifesto that was later translated into dozens of languages. The manifesto called for peaceful resistance to the war and Putin’s regime, support for Ukraine, and solidarity with feminists in Russia resisting the invasion (see next page). Together with the manifesto, social media accounts were launched on Telegram, Instagram, and Twitter as the main means of mobilization. FAR immediately gained dozens of thousands of subscribers due to the number of feminist media activists joining FAR, and due to a strong and clear anti-war stance, while many political forces and organizations in Russia failed to articulate it that fast.

9. DAGESTAN THE MAKING AND BREAKING OF THE INDEPENDENT MEDIA

   After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and during the ongoing war, questions about Russian civil society — its resistance (or the insufficiency of such), its defeat, its very existence — have been on many people’s minds. I suggest that we take a step back and look into something that has existed and, while on the brink of extinction today, has played an important role in forming societal discourse on a regional level: independent media in the republic of Dagestan.

10. The politics of environmental knowledge. Shaping environments through research, art, and activism

    The CBEES Environmental Conference, “The politics of environmental knowledge: Shaping environments through research, art, and activism in the Baltic Sea Region – and beyond” took place May 23–24, 2022 and was arranged in collaboration between CBEES and the Färgfabriken art gallery.

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