Watch it on NIICE Nepal Youtube Channel 

EVENT REPORT

A roundtable conference, titled' Dialogue with Ukraine', was scheduled in collaboration with the Ukrainian Embassy to unravel the Ukrainian side of the story against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The panellists included Dr. Mridula Ghosh, a professor from the National Institute of Kyiv, Mohila Academy, and Dr. Anastasia Piliavsky, who taught at India Institute, King’s College London, and Rohini Hensman, an independent scholar who has written extensively on worker rights, minority rights, feminism, and globalisation.

The event began with opening remarks from Ukrainian Charge d'Affaires Ivan Konovalov, who quoted the famous poet Rabindranath Tagore to assert the Ukrainian call for freedom. Dr. Ghosh took centre stage afterwards, and her presentation discussed the Postcoloniality of Ukraine, focusing on the history and politics of memory and the man-made famine in Ukraine. Starting with ‘nine undeniable truths,’ Ukraine was established as a sovereign republic with an ancient history of statehood and has been an independent state since 1991. Dr. Ghosh drew a parallel between Ukraine and the Global South, pointing out the commonalities of Ukraine being an undervalued region, a periphery state shadowed by Russo-centric historiography, imperfect public discourse, and an expansionist Russian media. With this background, while the war has caused an immense humanitarian crisis, it has also brought Ukraine to the forefront of international consciousness.

Dr. Ghosh, with this, explained the postcoloniality of the Ukrainian state: which was never a traditional colony in the sense of racial discrimination but rather subjugated linguistically and culturally and marginalised as ‘Little Russia’ with compromised national identity and political strength. Moreover, historically, Ukrainian nationalism was propagated as bourgeoisie nationalism and drew the ire of the Soviets through deportations and detentions. Even today, Ukraine cannot fight for itself; it depends on the West and NATO to protect its sovereign interests.

The attempt to erase the distinct Ukrainian identity included the banning of the Ukrainian language by the Church and Tsarist Russia, limitations by the Soviets, and well burning of Ukrainian books, libraries, and schools in occupied territories, including Crimea. She was reminiscent of similar attempts to erase the linguistic identity of people in erstwhile East Pakistan when military leaders of West Pakistan indiscriminately killed the Bengali population for its refusal to assimilate. Dr. Ghosh wrapped up her speech with an introduction to the ‘Famine in the Breadbasket of Europe’, which is now classified as a genocide against the Ukrainian population by the Soviet regime, which was a result of Soviet fear of the nationally aware Ukrainian peasant class.

Hereafter, the virtual floor is taken over by Dr. Anastasia Piliavsky, who began by saying, “Absolutely, unequivocally, this is Ukraine’s War of Independence and not anyone else’s war,” and rejected the narrative of the Russian-Ukraine war being a proxy war or Ukraine being a puppet to the agendas of Russia or the West. Dr. Piliavsky also drew comparisons between India under British rule and Ukraine’s history with Russia, both enshrined with a special status known as the Jewel of the crown. “Without Ukraine, there is no Russian empire,” she asserted, a narrative propagated by the Russian media to support their claims of Russians being a superior race that has the right to conquer and civilize; it is an empire and not merely a nation. Similar to India, any attempts at national assertion in Ukraine as been brutally repressed in the past, including the Holodomor of the peasant class. Dr. Piliavsky added a personal anecdote to her lecture and showcased pictures of her great-grandparents, who were victims of the Soviet repression of the peasants.

The Russian-Ukraine conflict is not an American initiative as a lot of people believe, and is a result of a long-standing history between the two states that has spanned several centuries. Moreover, Ukraine lost its nuclear arsenal due to joint pressure from then-US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Later, Barrack Obama remained passive in the face of the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Donbas wars. Donald Trump expressed admiration for Putin, and Biden has collaborated with Putin for security arrangements and supported him on the Minsk agreement which violates Ukraine’s territorial integrity. At the end of her speech, Dr. Piliavsky shared her appreciation for the courage of the Ukrainians and their efforts against the Russian military invasion. During the discussion round, she dismissed the idea of Russia being an heir to the Soviet idealogy due to the Russian government being extremely anti-communist and pro-consumerist and called for Ukrainian diplomacy to actively foster strong bilateral ties with countries of the Global South, especially India, which is also an agrarian economy with a colonial past like Ukraine. Additionally, she added her insights on India’s shared history with Russia, which has made it resistant to express unabashed solidarity with Ukrainians, unlike the Bangladeshi genocide in 1971.

The final speaker of the panel, Rohini Hensman, took over the question of why many anti-imperial states and political parties have not expressed solidarity with Ukraine. She began by recounting the Leninist vision for the USSR; the USSR was a voluntary union and republics under it were equal and had the right to secede, but when Stalin came to power, the freedom of secede was nothing more than a dead letter. The process of decolonization began with Yeltsin coming to power, who oversaw the disintegration of the USSR into 15 republics. Later, when Putin came to power, he was critical of Lenin and the Bolsheviks for creating Ukraine by chopping off part of Russia and envisioned the rise of a Tsarist Russia within the Russian Federation itself. The annexations of parts of Georgia, Moldova and now Ukraine, are a part of Putin’s imperial designs. Amidst this chaos, most authoritarian governments have supported Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by voting for Russia or claiming to be neutral and abstaining from voting. Even anti-imperialist and anti-war activists have been pro-Russian since the war began, accusing that these activists are so anti-western power, that will blindly support an opposing force no matter how despotic it is. She also criticised activists like John Pilger and Noam Chomsky for making excuses about the Russian invasion and undermining the Ukrainian resistance. She dismissed the excuses of Putin being forced to attack Ukraine due to NATO’s recent movement in Eastern Europe, or that Eastern Europe has no agency and is simply a tool for NATO and the West or even that the US & NATO are preventing Ukraine from negotiating with Russia. She refuted the victim blaming of Ukraine and defended the Ukrainian state being a bastion of racists or fascists. Her talk drew to a close with a comparison with the Munich appeasement of fascists that led to WW2 and questioned why would anybody want to repeat the same mistakes again.

At the end of the presentation part of the conference, speakers from NIICE and Center for Policy Alternatives, Sri Lanka and Rainbow Institute of Communication, Sri Lanka, took to the floor to discuss and debate the repercussions of Russian invasion of Ukraine, starting with the future of Nepal which is bordered by two heavy-handed neighbours and the possibility of suffering the same fate as Ukraine given the circumstances. Furthermore, Nepal has historically been neutral in international conflicts, but it has been supportive of Ukraine during the war due to its commitment to democracy. The Sri Lankan perspective was influenced by the war crimes by the Sri Lankan Government and LTTE alike during the Sri Lankan civil war, and hence they were concerned by the human rights violations in Ukraine after the war began. They also condemned the violation of territorial integrity by Russia that went against the norms of the International system and called for a diplomatic conclusion to the war as soon as possible. However, there was also an acceptance that due to the Sri Lankan government’s dependence on Russia to keep its economy afloat, it has not been in a position to staunchly criticise Putin's actions.

Dr. Mendez, who represented the Rainbow Institute of Communication, also reaffirmed the need to respect democratic institutions, the need to stand in solidarity with those affected, condemned military brutalities, and asserted that there cannot be any meaningful discussion unless there is an end to brutalities against people of a sovereign state. The world order is anarchic, with no credible international authority to defend Ukraine's interests, as most other countries are occupied with their own national interests and economic models. Once again, drawing parallels between the devastation in Sri Lanka due to egoistic, power-hungry leaders, Dr. Mendez reiterated the need for far-sighted solutions to curb external interference who have their crooked independence. He appreciated Zelenskyy for his understanding that a NATO membership for Ukraine would lead to further Russian hostilities and instability but regarded that the final decision for that resided with the sovereign people of Ukraine. Finally, he wished peace and stability to post-soviet Ukrainians and Russians in the days to come and voiced support for the Ukrainians currently on the receiving end of Russian aggression.

The final segment of the conference consisted of open questions to all of the speakers and panellists and invited discourse about India’s position as a global leader with its history of non-alignment, dissection of “de-westernization” of Ukraine, combating Russian propaganda within Ukraine, and the cultural hegemony within leftist circles that has led them to support anti-western forces despite their despotism, especially because Putin doesn’t even represent leftist interests. After that, the program ended with a keynote of thanks to all the speakers, representatives, and online participants.

Prepared by Shreya Das, NIICE Intern