1 00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:03,780 Well, good afternoon, everyone. It's nice to see so many faces. 2 00:00:04,140 --> 00:00:09,930 I've just come in from up the road. I'm at another conference where we've been talking about Ukraine for the last two days. 3 00:00:10,320 --> 00:00:12,090 So my head is sort of everywhere. 4 00:00:12,570 --> 00:00:21,870 But what I noticed at the conference that I just came from and something that actually I think Brooke did a fantastic job in his talk, 5 00:00:22,110 --> 00:00:25,829 was sort of the idea that Ukrainians are missing from this conversation. 6 00:00:25,830 --> 00:00:29,790 And I'm going to do right now a little bit of what Luc just did is kind of push back against 7 00:00:29,790 --> 00:00:34,349 my disciplines and question where the voices of Ukrainians are in these conversations, 8 00:00:34,350 --> 00:00:40,920 and especially within political science and international relations, but also within many of his policy circles and media accounts. 9 00:00:41,490 --> 00:00:44,670 The absence of Ukrainians is very clear, 10 00:00:44,670 --> 00:00:50,730 at least for me as a member of the diaspora and as someone who's been working on Ukraine for the last ten years. 11 00:00:51,540 --> 00:00:58,010 I've spent a great deal of my life in the country. And so for me, elevating the voices of Ukrainians is very important. 12 00:00:58,020 --> 00:01:04,560 And I'm really glad to see not only many individuals on the program today, but many Ukrainians and some of my own collaborators in the audience. 13 00:01:04,770 --> 00:01:11,690 So I think that these voices are really important and something that we really need to listen to whenever we are talking about peace in any capacity, 14 00:01:11,700 --> 00:01:16,080 sustainable, even in a temporary sense, but especially in the country going forward. 15 00:01:17,610 --> 00:01:26,010 The reason that I say this is because these are the images that have been dominating much of our media since the 24th of February 2022. 16 00:01:26,490 --> 00:01:32,490 This is a map that was from the 24th of February. And as you can see, Russia invaded Ukraine in many directions. 17 00:01:33,060 --> 00:01:36,930 Images associated with this have really been dominating our media. 18 00:01:37,530 --> 00:01:40,530 But they have changed over time. And here's a map. 19 00:01:40,530 --> 00:01:42,419 This is from mid-March. 20 00:01:42,420 --> 00:01:50,220 So it's not necessarily the most accurate one, but it shows that we have seen new developments over throughout the country in the last year and a bit. 21 00:01:50,970 --> 00:01:54,270 But still, we are still thinking about Ukraine, you know, kind of through this lens. 22 00:01:54,270 --> 00:01:54,930 Many lessons. 23 00:01:54,960 --> 00:02:02,670 Audience probably now know a lot more about Ukraine, including at the regional level, you know, probably where Kharkiv is, maybe a capsule and etc. 24 00:02:03,120 --> 00:02:12,569 From these maps that we're seeing in the news, we're also seeing many of these images, many of which Brooks just painted for us. 25 00:02:12,570 --> 00:02:21,990 Right. These women and children, these elderly people fleeing the country on foot by bus, many of them in buildings that have been attacked. 26 00:02:22,220 --> 00:02:27,660 And they have been these these have been very much the images of what we've seen above Ukraine in the last year. 27 00:02:28,470 --> 00:02:33,660 But also there have been other discussions dominating social media, especially Instagram and Twitter, 28 00:02:34,230 --> 00:02:38,460 due to Ukrainians creativity and using social media for their cause. 29 00:02:38,970 --> 00:02:46,709 We've seen some of these images. We've seen memes, in particular this one with the tractor and the tank, as well as just cities being liberated, 30 00:02:46,710 --> 00:02:52,170 like have a son and the nationalist expressions when these cities have been liberated, 31 00:02:52,170 --> 00:02:56,070 where these people are able to take back and move back to their cities and homes. 32 00:02:57,450 --> 00:03:02,669 But with this, we don't really know much about what Ukrainians think or what they're experiencing amidst the war, 33 00:03:02,670 --> 00:03:06,329 except for the accounts of individuals as they're leaving. But we can't. 34 00:03:06,330 --> 00:03:12,690 And as political scientists, we have very significant difficulties in trying to research the country while the war is ongoing. 35 00:03:12,960 --> 00:03:19,560 However, it is so important for us to know what they think in order for us to address or to help Ukraine in any capacity. 36 00:03:20,070 --> 00:03:25,290 So for this reason, last year, in February, I received a John Bell Fund, 37 00:03:25,290 --> 00:03:29,400 a research grant from the university for a completely different project in Ukraine. 38 00:03:29,670 --> 00:03:33,640 I had the funds and believed it was no longer ethical to do the research that I had done. 39 00:03:34,170 --> 00:03:39,030 And so what I did is I contacted a think tank in Ukraine who I was previously in touch with, 40 00:03:39,240 --> 00:03:43,890 and I asked them what they thought was the most necessary for Oxford researchers to do at that time. 41 00:03:44,400 --> 00:03:51,270 For them, there was no public opinion polling happening in the country and they believed it was really important to for us 42 00:03:51,270 --> 00:03:57,570 to know how Ukrainians saw the war but saw themselves and especially the foreign policy ambitions of the people. 43 00:03:58,080 --> 00:04:02,640 So with this well, I'll get back to a second. 44 00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:12,479 As a scholar of mine or colleague of mine, the DPR decided to run a public opinion survey with this and also kind of motivating our 45 00:04:12,480 --> 00:04:16,170 stance was much of the media that had been dominating the discussions about the war, 46 00:04:16,440 --> 00:04:24,300 often framing the war as though it started on the 24th of February, but forgetting that this was something that had been happening for nine years. 47 00:04:24,420 --> 00:04:32,280 And for many Ukrainians, many of them in this room, we can attest to the fact that 2014 was a significant turning point for Ukrainians, 48 00:04:33,030 --> 00:04:41,340 not only from the Euromaidan in 2013, 2014, but the annexation of Crimea and then the beginning of the war in Donbas, the Ukraine. 49 00:04:41,490 --> 00:04:49,200 The Russia-Ukraine war was an international and has been an international conflict backed by Russian separatists, by Russia and also Ukrainians. 50 00:04:49,410 --> 00:04:52,440 And it's very, very complex and there's many different nuances here. 51 00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:55,739 But it's not just been or has not just been a 12 month conflict. 52 00:04:55,740 --> 00:04:59,820 It's been a 12 month plus eight year conflict or now even a 13 or 14. 53 00:05:00,370 --> 00:05:04,509 Plus eight years. This is something that is really important for any conversation about peace 54 00:05:04,510 --> 00:05:09,219 and that this is not something new that has come about in the last few years, 55 00:05:09,220 --> 00:05:12,730 especially in the eyes of Ukrainians. This has been happening at a very local level. 56 00:05:13,030 --> 00:05:17,260 I've worked with families of war and orphan children for five years in the country. 57 00:05:17,500 --> 00:05:24,579 And this the horrors, the atrocities and these stories of trauma are very entrenched in very much a new 58 00:05:24,580 --> 00:05:28,810 generation of people who are now have been living with conflict for going on ten years. 59 00:05:29,020 --> 00:05:33,700 This is really important for us to remember when we're thinking about peace. And I threw up some numbers here. 60 00:05:34,060 --> 00:05:37,810 Just estimates for us to remind ourselves that there have been significant losses. 61 00:05:38,380 --> 00:05:40,800 This is not at all to undermine what we've seen since February. 62 00:05:40,810 --> 00:05:48,010 But just as a reminder that these losses are not new and they have been ongoing for a significant, significant period of time, 63 00:05:48,220 --> 00:05:56,260 and that there have also been many, many people internally displaced and also displaced within Europe since 2014 and not only since 2022. 64 00:05:57,640 --> 00:06:00,730 Still we've seen significant Ukrainian resistance. 65 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:09,430 And these are just some very simple visual for us to remind ourselves that when Russia did invade in 2022, 66 00:06:09,850 --> 00:06:16,870 there was a significant imbalance between Ukraine's state, especially within its military, its combat capabilities and Russia. 67 00:06:17,650 --> 00:06:24,820 But with this and as we've seen, Ukraine has continued to defend itself despite the significant losses, which we don't often talk about. 68 00:06:24,820 --> 00:06:30,850 And this is a really important reality. We do talk often about the Russian losses, that there have been significant losses on the Ukrainian side. 69 00:06:31,090 --> 00:06:31,989 Yes, they were. 70 00:06:31,990 --> 00:06:41,290 And they began this counteroffensive in February 2022 with a significant imbalance in just inequality, but yet they have continued to fight. 71 00:06:41,290 --> 00:06:46,060 Despite that, still, it's important for us to know what Ukrainians are thinking. 72 00:06:46,210 --> 00:06:53,260 So my colleague Karl and I, at the time we ran a public opinion survey in 11 regions of Ukraine, 73 00:06:53,860 --> 00:06:59,229 only the 11 regions we were able to get approval at the time because they were only under 74 00:06:59,230 --> 00:07:04,059 Ukraine's control and they hadn't been directly affected within the first immediate months. 75 00:07:04,060 --> 00:07:09,640 And so those are the places where they're highlighted in red. These are the regions that we had and were able to access. 76 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:16,690 What we were doing with this think tank is trying to compare their data that they are they've been collecting from February 2021, 77 00:07:16,720 --> 00:07:25,660 a year before the invasion, December 2021, so three months before the invasion and then days before the invasion in 2022 in February. 78 00:07:26,110 --> 00:07:29,559 And so I'm going to go through just some brief graphs for you to understand this. 79 00:07:29,560 --> 00:07:35,500 Again, these this survey particular was conducted in May, so just about three months after Russia's invasion. 80 00:07:36,130 --> 00:07:41,350 So the first question that had previously been asked in February 2022, before the invasion, 81 00:07:41,560 --> 00:07:44,560 was, who do you think is primarily responsible for the growing threat? 82 00:07:44,680 --> 00:07:49,420 Because this is what it was at the time. As you can see, the numbers there are significant in Russia. 83 00:07:49,600 --> 00:07:54,650 But when the question was asked again in May 2022, we see a greater, 84 00:07:54,670 --> 00:08:01,300 significantly growing increase in terms of it being the leadership of Russia and also the citizens of Russia. 85 00:08:01,960 --> 00:08:05,770 This question is important because especially in the first few months post-invasion, 86 00:08:05,920 --> 00:08:10,940 the rhetoric within the international community was very much about NATO expansion and EU expansion, 87 00:08:10,990 --> 00:08:14,200 why that's who is guilty and that was responsible for this. 88 00:08:14,380 --> 00:08:21,280 Yet in the eyes of Ukrainians, it was not. That, as you can see here, is actually in their eyes it was Russia and Russian civil society. 89 00:08:23,140 --> 00:08:30,880 Again, similar question asking that your interpretation of the events we see here that the war is a consequence of Russia's foreign 90 00:08:31,870 --> 00:08:38,180 aggressive foreign policy position rather than the consequence of perhaps NATO's expansion or Ukraine joining the EU or sorry, 91 00:08:38,200 --> 00:08:44,350 I'm joining a similarly and I think this is a quite interesting one, the changing views and allyship. 92 00:08:44,440 --> 00:08:50,080 So this is again from February 2022, before the invasion to May 2022, 93 00:08:50,380 --> 00:08:57,190 we see significant growing support for it at the UK, the US, the UK, the US and Poland. 94 00:08:57,550 --> 00:08:59,860 Again, this is not particularly surprising. 95 00:09:00,580 --> 00:09:07,000 Poland is a very obvious reason and the help that they have given says so substantially the US being a significant ally. 96 00:09:07,240 --> 00:09:12,970 But at this time Boris Johnson had been the first prime minister to visit Ukraine since the invasion. 97 00:09:13,060 --> 00:09:18,280 And so we can't really deduce whether this was actually have Ukrainians felt or because 98 00:09:18,370 --> 00:09:23,350 Boris Johnson had been so active in the news and he had been the first Western leader there. 99 00:09:23,650 --> 00:09:27,250 In any case, it is interesting to see such significant growing support. 100 00:09:27,250 --> 00:09:34,060 And if we were and I will be running this survey again in May, we will see what's been happening in the the last year. 101 00:09:35,470 --> 00:09:43,650 Another interesting one is just seeing the significant growth in support for Ukrainian supports for joining the EU going up. 102 00:09:43,660 --> 00:09:46,900 I believe it's 13 percentage points and which has gone up. 103 00:09:47,260 --> 00:09:50,420 There's very much supports even though it was only in 11 regions. 104 00:09:50,440 --> 00:09:57,220 There's the same finding that we several other teams of scholars, including a team based at Manchester, have found with more regions. 105 00:09:57,430 --> 00:09:59,770 I included is that there has been if anything the. 106 00:09:59,810 --> 00:10:05,900 War has actually increased Ukrainian supports for joining the EU and arguably NAITO, although we don't have that question in ours. 107 00:10:06,680 --> 00:10:09,139 And this is again from that same group of scholars. 108 00:10:09,140 --> 00:10:15,710 They've also seen a growing support for democracy and support of Ukrainians believing in Ukraine becoming a democratic state. 109 00:10:16,010 --> 00:10:20,700 This is in my data, but I thought it was interesting and important to show because this is often a question that I'm asking. 110 00:10:20,700 --> 00:10:25,879 You talk about this data and Belarus is also something we often think about. 111 00:10:25,880 --> 00:10:30,830 What is Belarus's position here? Again, prior to the invasion and after May, 112 00:10:30,860 --> 00:10:39,260 Ukrainians has suggested that there's a growing fear and that Belarus is playing a role in this and more so than they had prior to the invasion. 113 00:10:39,620 --> 00:10:46,069 This might change now, and when I asked the same survey again, we might see a different result because Belarus hasn't been as active, 114 00:10:46,070 --> 00:10:49,340 or at least is a location in which Russia can attack Ukraine. 115 00:10:49,460 --> 00:10:52,640 However, they still have not been neutral. They have been active in this. 116 00:10:52,640 --> 00:10:56,780 And so it's hard to say whether this will hold or whether we might see some changes here. 117 00:10:58,250 --> 00:11:02,990 Finally, what I think is really important with this survey is around concessions, 118 00:11:03,050 --> 00:11:06,980 because this is also a conversation that at the time in the first three months, 119 00:11:06,980 --> 00:11:12,100 but especially now, we are still talking about what will Ukraine give up in order for peace? 120 00:11:12,110 --> 00:11:14,840 What is what is Ukraine willing to concede? 121 00:11:15,200 --> 00:11:21,620 As you can see in this survey, I mean, Ukrainians said 78% of them said they they will not support any concessions. 122 00:11:22,120 --> 00:11:30,320 I'm still within this question. My colleague and I felt that it was a little bit too vague and that 78% is a very strong position. 123 00:11:30,470 --> 00:11:35,090 But we wanted to tease that out a little bit more to see if there was perhaps anything in that. 124 00:11:35,690 --> 00:11:38,760 So we added another another question in there. 125 00:11:38,780 --> 00:11:43,189 And what we can see is that the only or the only bit of movement would really 126 00:11:43,190 --> 00:11:47,390 be around humanitarian issues and specifically around humanitarian corridors. 127 00:11:47,840 --> 00:11:57,410 If you remember back in May and April 2022, we saw a significant number of attacks on humanitarian corridors as Ukrainians are being evacuated. 128 00:11:57,590 --> 00:12:01,850 So this does align with what was happening on the ground, and I'm sure Brooks can attest to that. 129 00:12:02,660 --> 00:12:07,250 There was significant fear, and I do believe that this is where Ukrainian opposition came from. 130 00:12:07,740 --> 00:12:15,290 Nevertheless, this really prompted us to think about what else is important to Ukrainians, because if we're going to talk about concession, 131 00:12:15,290 --> 00:12:21,980 we also need to know what and how they feel about their country, their political autonomy, especially their territorial integrity. 132 00:12:23,270 --> 00:12:30,410 So this led to a second, second conjoint survey experiment led by, again, my colleague and also another colleague at Nuffield. 133 00:12:30,740 --> 00:12:36,170 I'm only going to go into this very briefly, but really the message that I want to take away is in the next slide, 134 00:12:36,650 --> 00:12:39,140 as you can see, we were able to add some additional regions. 135 00:12:39,440 --> 00:12:45,410 And again, these are only regions that individuals had not or that were under Ukrainian control. 136 00:12:45,650 --> 00:12:50,540 And we only surveyed individuals who had not fled or left their homes since Russia's invasion. 137 00:12:51,860 --> 00:12:55,460 This is sort of an understanding of that's how we chose our sample. 138 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:04,250 Any of these regions and these are the initial were the initial text where we had selected Sumi to highlight up there. 139 00:13:04,250 --> 00:13:11,120 Sumi was originally in our sample, but during data collection we actually had to drop the sample because individuals there were 140 00:13:11,120 --> 00:13:15,950 so sceptical of our enumerators on the grounds thinking they were acting on behalf of Russia. 141 00:13:16,310 --> 00:13:22,139 So if anything, at this amongst many stories to articulate the challenges of any research being conducted in Ukraine at this 142 00:13:22,140 --> 00:13:26,930 time and not even speaking about the ethics and potential re traumatisation that come with conducting research. 143 00:13:27,380 --> 00:13:31,070 In any case, though, we were able to gather significant data, 144 00:13:31,700 --> 00:13:40,070 and what we found in this through our experiment is essentially that Ukrainians are not trading off the costs and benefits of war, 145 00:13:40,250 --> 00:13:44,480 as we've seen in every single context in which we can find in the literature, 146 00:13:44,870 --> 00:13:53,090 in that there is not a threshold of civilian or military deaths or even a nuclear strike that would deter them from continuing to fight. 147 00:13:53,870 --> 00:14:03,049 What we found, and it's 79% of individuals said that first and foremost for them is controlling their political system. 148 00:14:03,050 --> 00:14:11,240 Controlling their government was first and foremost important. And the second is that the territory of their country, including Donbas and Crimea, 149 00:14:11,420 --> 00:14:17,480 are fundamental to them and that they are willing to continue to fight until these are sustained. 150 00:14:18,030 --> 00:14:21,320 This is really important for us as political scientists, as policymakers, 151 00:14:21,620 --> 00:14:25,610 anyone really interested in the discussion to know that if Ukrainians are not going to fight 152 00:14:25,880 --> 00:14:30,110 and thinking about or giving them the conversation or suggestion that they should negotiate 153 00:14:30,110 --> 00:14:34,069 is off the table and that we need to think about creative ways to work with Ukrainians if 154 00:14:34,070 --> 00:14:39,860 this is how definitively their position is still and I want to end on a positive note, 155 00:14:39,860 --> 00:14:43,219 because I think that this is a conversation. 156 00:14:43,220 --> 00:14:47,810 It's not entirely bleak. And I think Brooke highlighted this, too, in talking about the local level. 157 00:14:48,140 --> 00:14:54,320 We have seen significant grassroots support in a way that perhaps would be unexpected in times of war. 158 00:14:54,680 --> 00:14:59,660 This is again from my colleagues in Manchester. But we can see a significant number of individuals in. 159 00:14:59,810 --> 00:15:06,920 Ageing and grassroots organisations donating funds, cooking, helping the military in many different ways, not just fighting on the front lines. 160 00:15:07,670 --> 00:15:15,030 This is it continues to grow in their numbers here. They say 61% in the top blue, but it's even more in the more contemporary days. 161 00:15:15,030 --> 00:15:20,180 The second survey was in May 2022, and they've continued to run a poll since then. 162 00:15:21,410 --> 00:15:26,239 In addition, in my own work, I've been looking at you expressions of the nation and other. 163 00:15:26,240 --> 00:15:32,720 I'm active, but perhaps different ways in which Ukrainians have been expressing their nation and fighting for Ukraine. 164 00:15:33,080 --> 00:15:37,730 These are photos of music, the express underground in bomb shelters across the country. 165 00:15:37,910 --> 00:15:42,650 We have professional violin players, for example, playing to keep the morale in the spirits up. 166 00:15:43,550 --> 00:15:50,120 You know, puppeteers, we also see this incredible art being painted on to the size of the bomb shelters. 167 00:15:50,540 --> 00:15:55,230 The one on the left is by children in Chechnya. As you can see through the colours, there is this view, 168 00:15:55,280 --> 00:16:01,280 the sense of nationalism as expressions to support and fight for your nation, even perhaps in a different way. 169 00:16:02,090 --> 00:16:07,870 Finally, these are just another example, including a famous Ukrainian musician who's travelled across the country. 170 00:16:07,880 --> 00:16:11,120 This is in Kharkiv singing and really boosting the morale of citizens. 171 00:16:11,450 --> 00:16:15,140 So this reminds us that there is much more happening than those images I showed you at the beginning. 172 00:16:15,710 --> 00:16:20,750 And with that, I just want to leave us sort of with four final questions that perhaps can stimulate discussion later. 173 00:16:21,560 --> 00:16:26,580 One, you know, how do we account for Ukraine's agency? We are talking about the war, as you can tell. 174 00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:31,570 I believe this is fundamental to how do we talk about Ukrainians agency or give agency. 175 00:16:31,580 --> 00:16:35,960 We talk about peace because Ukrainians need to be elevated in these discussions as well. 176 00:16:36,830 --> 00:16:43,550 Three What does peace look like for Ukrainians when Russia will be and is always going to be Ukraine's neighbour? 177 00:16:43,610 --> 00:16:46,940 How do we understand that and have Ukrainians understand that fundamentally? 178 00:16:47,780 --> 00:16:52,640 And finally, keeping Ukrainians views in mind, what does support for Ukraine actually look like? 179 00:16:53,030 --> 00:16:56,270 With that, I thank you for your time and hope we can continue this conversation later.