The circular economy has long been regarded as a fundamental strategy for achieving sustainable development. Most recently, it has also been acknowledged as an effective approach to crisis response. This study contributes to this nascent literature by introducing a dual hierarchy of 6Rs strategies as an inspiring framework for circular post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, supporting the “Build Back Better” principle through circular initiatives. The key distinction between the proposed hierarchy and the traditional 6Rs framework lies in the two-vector operationalization of each strategy, addressing both past and future considerations. Also, this article examines the case of war-torn Ukraine as one of the most severe man-made disasters. The study explores Ukraine’s potential for circular recovery within the framework of European Union policies in the construction sector.

Scholarship has identified key determinants of people’s belief in misinformation predominantly from English-language contexts. However, multilingual citizens often consume news media in multiple languages. We study how the language of consumption affects belief in misinformation and true news articles in multilingual environments. We suggest that language may pass on specific cues affecting how bilinguals evaluate information. In a ten-week survey experiment with bilingual adults in Ukraine, we measured if subjects evaluating information in their less-preferred language were less likely to believe it. We find those who prefer Ukrainian are less likely to believe both false and true stories written in Russian by approximately 0.2 standard deviation units. Conversely, those who prefer Russian show increased belief in false stories in Ukrainian, though this effect is less robust. A secondary digital media literacy intervention does not increase discernment as it reduces belief in both true and false stories equally.

Animals routinely suffer violence by humans, especially during war, but it is unclear how much people in conflict environments express concern for animal welfare. Based on a 2,008-person survey in Ukraine in May 2024, we find that respondents are anthropocentric, prioritizing human over animal suffering; biocentric, regarding both as important; or, in a small minority, zoocentric, emphasizing animal over human suffering. Experimental priming on violence against animals during the Russia–Ukraine war has limited effect on changing attitudes toward animal welfare, but it does increase resource allocation to animal relief organizations. A war crimes punishment experiment also shows that while respondents sanction perpetrators of human suffering more severely than perpetrators of animal suffering, violence against animals is still strongly penalized, indicating appreciation for animal rights, justice, and accountability. We reflect on the implications of our findings for speciesist versus posthumanist understandings of suffering during war.

Situated at the intersection of language rights, nation-building processes, and security issues, this article analyzes language policies in Ukraine in the three decades since its independence (1991–2021). It traces the legal evolution and decisions of the Ukrainian Constitutional Court, identifying the specific ideological approaches towards language issues that emerge in such a development. We distinguish four periods in the evolution of Ukrainian laws, highlighting how these stages reflect specific ontological and societal (in)securities and related securitization processes, and their intersection with the process of nation-building and the role assigned to the Ukrainian language in such a process. In this way, the article discusses how, in light of the Soviet legacy and Russian kin-state activism and geopolitical agenda, Ukraine has moved to adopt a more assertive nationalizing approach to language issues that aim at promoting Ukrainian as the state language. Russia’s aggressive actions accelerated the ongoing nation-building process, interplaying with the relevance assigned to the Ukrainian language for the Ukrainian nation-state as well as the country’s ontological and societal (in)securities. In this way, our contribution complements our understanding of language policies, bringing to light the connections of their evolution and variations with how security concerns affect nation-building processes.

This article examines the divergent historical views espoused by Russian and Ukrainian societies and their representatives on topics such as the 1932-1933 famine, Stalinism, and the post-World War II Soviet Union. We draw on an original online survey, conducted simultaneously in January 2021 in Ukraine and Russia, to provide an in-depth analysis of views on history in Ukraine and Russia before the 2022 invasion. In Russia, we illustrate how little contestation there is of official narratives. This may signal the existence of an integrated mnemonic community after a decade of state-curated historical narratives, but it might also imply that Russian society is disengaged from history. In pre-2022 Ukraine, meanwhile, we identify persistent fragmentation in the ways in which society perceives history, largely centered along the country’s linguistic divide. However, a central finding is that Russian-speakers in Ukraine differ in their historical views from Russian citizens on key dimensions such as the memory of Stalin and the Holodomor. These results speak to the evolving and politicized nature of societal memory and provide an important baseline for interpreting potential mnemonic shifts that accompanied the full-scale war launched against Ukraine by Russia in February 2022.

Following the large-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, policymakers and humanitarian actors urgently sought to anticipate displacement flows within Ukraine. However, existing internal displacement data systems had not been adapted to contexts as dynamic as a full-fledged war marked by uneven trigger events. A year and a half later, policymakers and practitioners continue to seek forecasts, needing to anticipate how many internally displaced persons (IDPs) can be expected to return to their areas of origin and how many will choose to stay and seek a durable solution in their place of displacement. This article presents a case study of an anticipatory approach deployed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Mission in Ukraine since March 2022, delivering nationwide displacement figures less than 3 weeks following the invasion alongside near real-time data on mobility intentions as well as key data anticipating the timing, direction, and volume of future flows and needs related to IDP return and (re)integration. The authors review pre-existing mobility forecasting approaches, then discuss practical experiences with mobility prediction applications in the Ukraine response using the Ukraine General Population Survey (GPS), including in program and policy design related to facilitating durable solutions to displacement. The authors focus on the usability and ethics of the approach, already considered for replication in other displacement contexts.

The article explores the interplay between imperialism and ethnonationalism, revealing how these seemingly conflicting ideologies coalesced in Russian political thought. The period of 1989–1994 saw a struggle between civic nationalism, which sought to redefine Russia within its existing borders, and imperialist-nationalist currents that viewed Soviet disintegration as a geopolitical catastrophe. Within this ideological conflict, the “time bomb” metaphor emerged as a potent rhetorical device, encapsulating anxieties about territorial fragmentation and national decline. The study identifies Russian émigré intellectual Gleb Rahr as a key figure in introducing the metaphor, later popularized by figures such as Dmitry Rogozin and Vladimir Putin.

To what extent can drones be the primary determinants of victory in warfare? This question is at the heart of the drone revolution debate in security studies. Proponents of a drone revolution argue that drones provide ‘game-changing characteristics’, act as ‘magic bullets’ against adversaries, and even provide the key defence to decide the ‘fate of nations’. Sceptics disagree, arguing that no matter the nuances or contexts of war, drones can never be considered the primary determinant of victory. In this article, we argue that the two sides of the debate rest upon a false dichotomy – that technologies must either be revolutionary or evolutionary. We reappraise country-specific case studies used by both sides of the debate: the Ethiopia–Tigray War, the Houthi–Saudi War, and the Russia–Ukraine War. Our analysis reveals a welcome synthesis; the impact of drone employment depends on the types of war waged, the drone capabilities deployed, and the political objectives sought in each conflict. In this sense, drones can have an impact on war that is sometimes ordinary and sometimes revolutionary. It is only by clarifying the analytical scope of the debate that the impact of drones on the practice of war can be fully understood.

Despite the destruction it inevitably engenders and the opposition it often elicits, war remains a near-human universal. There is almost no society, across time or place, that has not experienced some form of violent conflict, whether internally or against its neighbors or adversaries. The most common explanations for the causes of war and conflict tend to center around social and material factors, such as conflicts over resources, territory, or regime type. Certainly, these factors play a role in many conflicts, but they cannot alone explain every war. Other arguments, however, drawn from evolutionary psychology and biological anthropology, based on fundamental aspects of human nature with regard to male coalitionary psychology, do posit specific sources for conflict that provide an underlying platform for its emergence and can help explain its wide variety across time and space. A comprehensive and accurate understanding of the nature of war must include these considerations.

In this article, we show that the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a pro-democratic reaction from citizens in liberal democracies, which we term the “rally for democracy.” Unlike the conventional “rally ‘round the flag” effect that boosts government popularity, this involves citizens rallying behind democracy as an international ideal. It includes expressing stronger proximity to democratic powers, stronger approval for democratic leaders abroad, and greater aversion to authoritarian regimes. Through a survey quasi-experiment conducted in six countries between February and May of 2022, we provide evidence that the “rally for democracy” emerged immediately following Russia’s invasion. Exploring this observation further via analysis of data from 55 countries between 2014 and 2023, we find this to be the intensification of a longer-term trend in response to the rise of authoritarian great powers. A new cleavage exists in geopolitical loyalties, based on the degree to which citizens feel attachment to democracy, and this divide runs both between and within countries.

The article focuses on the Ukrainian official language policies and their impact on Ukrainian people-building, claiming the state promotion of Ukrainian as an exclusive language of public life and the ethnically-based understanding of the Ukrainian people, inevitably lead to the exclusion of non-Ukrainian communities from participation in democratic processes, politicise the already problematic language situation and risk undermining the role of Ukrainian as an official language.

For such an analysis, and a conceptualisation of how the state can shape the nature of the people, the article proposes a new theoretical understanding of the people as an organisational system, based on a functional adaptation of Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory and Charles Taylor’s social imaginary.

How do autocracies use nationalism to normalize and contain unsettled times? The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked a decisive point in Russia’s politics from which there could be no return to an antebellum normality. Rather than attempt to mobilize the Russian public to war, state-run television sought to normalize the war as a banal reality for domestic audiences. Drawing on a content analysis of 1,575 reports from the state-run First Channel [Pervyi Kanal] from 2022 to 2024, this article argues that the Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia — the so-called “new regions” — are crucial to this strategy through their incorporation into banal nationalist depictions of Russia. In turn, televised depictions of residents in the “new regions” confer emotional weight and moral examples for ordinary Russians through their everyday practices: their fortitude in voting for Putin despite ongoing attacks; through their shared excitement in acquiring routine aspects of daily life from passports to pensions; and through their embodiment of Russia’s future. In the process, media depictions normalize imperial nationalist justifications for Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory in terms of the distinctiveness of the Russian people, Russia’s civilizing mission, and presentation of its war as defensive.

This theoretical and empirical study describes and explains the patterns of changes in domestic illicit trade and related transnational illicit flows of goods, services and money during the extreme social crises based on the case of the war in Ukraine. Depending on the legal status of the civil circulation of items, illicit trade is categorized into two groups: illicit (criminal) trade outside the economic sphere; and illicit (illegal) trade within the economic sphere. Typical destructive practices and their peculiarities during the war are considered in each group of illicit trade with the use of quantitative and qualitative methods. In terms of the dichotomy “war as a cause and consequence of crime”, this article addresses significant transformations in established criminal activities outside the official economy, such as drug trafficking and human trafficking, while also highlighting newly emerging crimes, specifically the illegal movement of conscripts across national borders. Furthermore, the article explores illegal trade within the economy, focusing on the trade in excisable goods and the new growing issue of abuse of humanitarian aid. The authors discuss the main deficiencies in adequate counteraction related to both war circumstances and systematic problems of state institutions, in particular, the criminal justice system.

When the European Union was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2012, the citation stated that military conflict on the continent was “virtually inconceivable” owing to its action. This article will examine what role its acts and omissions played in the origins of the Ukraine crisis. The tensions stoked by potential NATO membership have been well aired. However, this article will argue that the treatment of minorities and particularly of the Russian language was equally important. The EU’s failure to address these questions by insisting Kjiv grant substantial linguistic rights, or even regional autonomy as foreseen by the second Minsk agreement, was a significant cause of the conflict.