Chains of insecurities: constructing Ukraine’s agency in times of war

ABSTRACT

This article maps how Ukraine’s international agency has been discursively constructed through juxtaposing and relating different insecurities triggered by the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022. How does Ukraine persuade its partners of the validity of its approach to these insecurities, what is the intentionality behind its strategy, and how do they contribute to the production of the Ukrainian agency? It argues that Ukraine’s agency is developed in the context of the battlefield, and therefore becomes a heavy loaded security concept with a strong normative background. By addressing numerous insecurities in energy supply, environmental and nuclear hazards, and disruption of food transportation, Ukraine builds the strategic narrative of the war as an intrinsic part of European security governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia’s war in Ukraine
• Ukraine
• (in)security
• discourse
• agency
• normative power
• security governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation within the framework of the scientific project “Reacting to war – the impact of crisis on social groups and political discourses”.

Notes on contributors

Yuliia Kurnyshova

Yuliia Kurnyshova is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Her current research project explores the political and security implications of the Russia's war against Ukraine. She graduated from Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, where she obtained Masters Diploma in History and Journalism. In 2004 she defended theoretical thesis on U.S. Foreign Policy during the Berlin Crisis 1958–1963. She has been working for National Institute for Strategic Studies (Kyiv) and Institute for Social and Economic Research as a foreign policy analyst. Her most recent affiliation was with Institute of International Relations (Kyiv). Apart from her academic work, she has been engaged in different international and Ukrainian activities directed at implementation of reforms in Ukraine. With the start of Russian invasion in Ukraine in February 2022, she had to flee Ukraine. Focus of her research: political discourses, foreign policy of Ukraine, international security.