This week my article spotlights on Ukraine focus on the environmental destruction that Ukraine is suffering as a result of Russia’s war of aggression. I’ve included a few excerpts from each that I hope will motivate you to read both articles in their entirety. Rather than adding a commentary, I’ve decided to pair each article with AI art that I created after reading these articles.
“In Ukraine we are all carrying phantom pain” by Olesya Khromeychuk.
Since my brother was killed in action in 2017, so much has changed. Russia scaled up its “liberation”. It is fighting not only the military, but also terrorising civilians by targeting hospitals, schools, and ordinary family homes as their inhabitants catch some sleep in between air raid sirens. It has left vast areas uninhabitable, by razing cities and towns to the ground; by turning what was once a place into post-apocalyptic territory. Village after village stands empty; forests, littered with mines, are abandoned; fields are wounded with explosions and covered in gaping craters instead of crops. These places have been liberated from life by the Russians and recovery will take years, demining will take decades, and forgiveness will take generations, if it ever comes.
“Autocracy and Planetary Harm” by Adriana Petryna
In addition to identifying victims buried in mass graves, and rebuilding hospitals, industrial facilities, schools, and homes, an enormous task remains: to render soils usable and air breathable, liberating cities and towns from radiation, chemical, and explosive hazards, and unsanitary water supplies made unsafe by mercury and the proximity of mass graves. If bombs are meant to seize territory, they can also be used to achieve a degree of devastation in which former ways of life cannot return. Such consequences, and more, must be factored into a ‘de-occupation algorithm’ that might enable a country to see its way out of attempted annihilation.
But it is not just in war zones that we see the precariousness incited by political extremism. With rampant extractivism, and the planet’s ecosystems becoming increasingly unstable, the realities of restoring life after occupation is a planetary challenge, one that forces us to make connections between seemingly disparate circumstances that are also scenes of a race, fueled by autocrats, to seemingly sabotage planetary life.
For those interested, I have just started an Instagram account where I will be posting my AI art on Ukraine. https://www.instagram.com/hermeneuticalmvts/