The War and Religion in Ukraine: The Role of NGOs in Evidence Collection for Future International Trials

Michelle Coleman is a lecturer in law at Swansea University.

The war in Ukraine is possibly the most documented war in history. Governments, news organizations, the International Criminal Court, NGOs, and individuals are continually monitoring and documenting events as they take place in real time. Some of this collection and preservation of information is with an eye toward determining whether war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed.

In March 2022 I wrote for this blog about the importance of information collection before deciding whether international criminal law would be pertinent to the war in Ukraine. I argued that the need for prosecutions and trials can only be determined following a thorough investigation. Some time must pass while a conflict is ongoing in order to gain perspective, gather evidence, and sort through what might be a war crime or crime against humanity and what might just be an unfortunate, but legal, consequence of war. Now, nearly a year later, we can consider the importance of this information gathering and how it may be used within the context of international criminal law.

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Ukrainian Churches and the Implementation of the Istanbul Convention in Ukraine: Being European Without Accepting “Gender”

Regina Elsner is a researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin.

The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, appeared not only to be an instrument of preventing domestic and gender-based violence but also to symbolize a civilizational choice in times of culture wars. On 1 November 2022, the Istanbul Convention entered into law in Ukraine. After years of controversial public debates and two unsuccessful attempts, the Ukrainian Parliament finally ratified the Convention amidst Russia’s aggressive war.

Ukraine participated in drafting the Istanbul Convention and signed it in 2011. Since that time, the country struggled over the ratification of the Convention and its implementation into Ukrainian law and society. One of the main obstacles has been religious communities and conservative groups, which strongly oppose the use of the term gender as well as references to gender identity and sexual orientation in the text of the Convention. At the same time, most religious actors in Ukraine are supportive of the “European” choice of Ukraine and the more general concept of “European values.” Thus, in Ukraine we have witnessed a more complex religious attitude to gender discourse than mere endorsement of illiberalism or “right-wing defiance to West-Eurocentrism.”[1]

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Speak of the Devil: The Kremlin’s Futile Attempts at Consolidating a Ukrainian Enemy Image

Elizaveta Gaufman is Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

Why did Russia start the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022? If you examine the numerous statements released by the Russian government and pro-Kremlin media, there are many reasons to choose from, from biological laboratories that are supposed to infect birds with diseases that can spread among the Russian population, to NATO, to the tried-and-tested narrative about “Ukrainian Nazis.” However, recently a new reason was put forward by the Russian government: “de-satanification” of Ukraine. It seems that the Kremlin can no longer persuade the population to fight against Banderovites (the name Russian propaganda uses for the Ukrainian military), and they decided to resort to a much more comprehensive enemy image—the Devil. As a scholar of enemy images, I argue this turn in Kremlin rhetoric shows that the Russian government has exhausted all possible ways to deride Ukrainians and is going for the metaphysical jugular. While it is a staple method in propaganda, this strategy is going to fail for a number of reasons, including very low religiosity levels in Russia. However, it is important to take a look at the enmification mechanism altogether.  

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