War changes everything. The disastrous consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are no exception. The fog of war rarely allows for discerning analyses. Violence polarises, and differentiation itself risks becoming suspicious. Volodymyr Ishchenko, one of the left’s most important commentators on Ukraine over the past decade, is the rare figure of an engaged intellectual who insists that the current disaster must be read in the context of broader historical and societal processes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Importantly, this includes questions of class, routinely ignored in mainstream interpretations, and the vicissitudes of strategies of opposing oligarchic blocs in both Ukraine and Russia. In conversation with journalist Jerko Bakotin, Volodymyr Ishchenko will comment on the current developments in Ukraine, the trajectory from Maidan to war, the underlying social, economic and political driving forces that have lead to the current disaster.
Volodymyr Ishchenko was born in Hoshcha in western Ukraine in 1982. He grew up in Kiev, taught sociology at Kiev universities and was active in the Ukrainian new left. He is now a researcher at the Freie Universität in Berlin. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Jacobin and New Left Review. He is the author of Towards the Abyss:Ukraine from Maidan to War, Verso, 2024.
