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[Viewpoint] Russian spatial imaginaries and the invasion of Ukraine: geopolitics and nationalist fantasies

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posted on 2023-06-10, 06:08 authored by Stefanie OrtmannStefanie Ortmann
As Alec Murphy (this forum) argues, Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlights the continuing relevance of the modernist territorial imagination – but this should not lead us to adopt simplistic explanations of Russia's actions. Linear geopolitical assumptions about the link between territory and great power behaviour continue to dominate Western debates about the invasion and underpin an excessive focus on Russian national security perceptions and the role of NATO (e.g. Mearsheimer, 2022; for a more critical perspective see Megoran, this forum). Ironically, such a focus fails to capture the full significance of the modernist territorial imagination in this war. As has been pointed out, foregrounding NATO cannot account for the role of Ukrainian agency (see Vorbrugg and Bluwstein, this forum). But it also brushes over the complex entanglement of spatial and statist imaginaries that exist on the Russian side, with implications not only for the ongoing debate about the reasons for the invasion but also for predictions about possible outcomes of the war. We need to pay more attention to variants of modernist territorial imaginaries, especially when moving beyond the ‘core West’ of Europe and the US – while also acknowledging that these imaginaries continue to have wide emotional appeal and are not simply a residual of the way the international system operates (Penrose, 2002). In this I argue, with Stuart Elden and others, for an understanding of ‘territory as a process, not an outcome, (…) continually made and remade’ (Elden, 2013, p. 35; cf. also Jackman et al., 2020). This does not mean that we should leave (nation-)statism behind when thinking about territory, but that we need to pay attention to the specifics of statist and spatial imaginaries and the way they co-produce geopolitical contexts. The invasion is both motivated by modernist territorial imaginaries and already changing them, including in an apparent re-territorialization of ‘Russia’ whose ultimate significance is not yet clear. Great power-ness (derzhavnost’) in current Kremlin discourse and practices is best understood as part of the visceral political affect of nationalism. To the Kremlin, Ukraine's relationship with NATO matters primarily for its affective and symbolic value, a geopolitics of identity that is co-produced at different scales between Russia, Ukraine and the West. Ultimately, what may be at stake is not so much Russian national security but regime security and the surprisingly fragile domestic (self-)legitimation of the Kremlin, which in recent years has increasingly relied on a set of narratives and conspiracy theories based on spatial imaginaries that resonate with ordinary Russians (Ortmann, 2017; Greene, 2022).

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Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Political Geography

ISSN

0962-6298

Publisher

Elsevier

Page range

102784-102784

Department affiliated with

  • International Relations Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • No

Legacy Posted Date

2023-02-01

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2023-02-01

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2023-02-01

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