Slavic Colloquium - Darya Tsymbalyuk - “Loss of Shared Worlds: Narrative Environmental Destruction in Times of Russia’s War on Ukraine”

In this talk I present glimpses from my forthcoming book “Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War” (Polity, March 2025). Russia’s ongoing environmental damage in Ukraine has been visible globally through narratives of the Kakhovka disaster, destruction of grain and grain facilities, and the active role Ukraine has been taking in trailblazing the documentation of the crimes of ecocide and in making a precedent for the addition of the crime of ecocide to the Rome Statute. In my work, I am interested in the everyday reality of living with and witnessing ecocide, where I argue that the impacts of ecocide transcend the boundaries of legal understandings of the crime, and profoundly shape ways in which we perceive and experience environments. Thus, places that were once considered save now hold danger, where, for example, practices such as mushroom picking, foraging, collecting firewood and taking cattle out for grazing are often lethal. By focusing on ruptured and reconfigured environmental relations, I therefore reflect on the changing meanings of water, air, zemlia, bodies, plants, and energy in Ukraine today.