This project addresses the everyday life experiences of people under the Russian occupation in Ukraine. Russian aggression against Ukraine, which began in 2014, led to the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the occupation of parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. A full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted in the occupation of parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Today in Ukraine we can talk about “old” (since 2014) and “new” (since 2022) occupied territories. This allows us not only to rethink the current experience of occupation, but also to look at the consequences of occupation in the long term.

The dynamics of the perception of Russian aggression against Ukraine since 2014 have clearly demonstrated the difficulty of identifying the situation as war and occupation. The use of different terms in describing the events and the long and gradual “language adjustment” reflect information warfare, propaganda, and the aggressor’s desire to downplay or hide its role in the events. This is relevant both during the conflict and long afterwards. For example, in post-WWII Soviet Ukraine, the lack of language to describe the World War II occupation and its limited and one-sided nature created a highly ideological and empirically flawed “precedent text” for both institutions and citizens. The preservation of the Soviet narrative in mass consciousness during the Ukrainian post-Soviet era and its vehement opposition to the national one is also reflected in the way occupation and collaboration are perceived and articulated today, under the conditions of full-scale Russian aggression.

Despite considerable scholarly attention to the occupation, many issues require further in-depth understanding. In this project I would like to discuss how war and occupation in real time show the problematic nature of “neutral” terminology. What are the limitations of existing theoretical concepts and of their applicability to different contexts? Why is the identification of situations as war and occupation often delayed? What do we know and understand about the occupation based on a detailed study of it from a historical perspective? Is it possible to apply this knowledge to assess what is happening now, in the context of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine?