This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Why we as feminists must lobby for air defence for Ukraine

By:   []

Date: 2022-03 

Since the beginning of the escalation and the siege of Mariupol, more than 2,200 civilians have been killed. An adviser to the mayor of Mariupol said the actual number of the victims could be much higher – up to 20,000 people.

While we were writing this piece, on 14 March, there were at least 22 missile attacks on the city. In the previous weeks, more than 100 bombs have been dropped on Mariupol, in what seems to be an attempt to completely erase the city from the face of the Earth.

The siege continues, and the city remains without water, electricity and heating. When humanitarian corridors have been organised to evacuate residents, Russia has shelled them too.

Mariupol is not the only city where civilians have been mercilessly targeted. On the other side of the country, Kharkiv has been shelled heavily for days, and around 600 residential buildings, including 50 schools, have been destroyed. The list goes on: the towns of Irpin and Bucha outside Kyiv, and Volnovakha in the Donetsk region. On 11 March, Russians reportedly shot women and children who had tried to flee a village, Peremoha, in the Kyiv region, killing at least seven people.

Nowhere in Ukraine is safe at the moment. Russian soldiers have been committing war crime after war crime. They will continue to do so if we do nothing to stop them.

Why is this an imperial war?

It is impossible to tell the history of Ukraine and the history of its struggle against Russia here. But a few things are important to understand the broader context of Russia’s imperial war against Ukraine.

First, for centuries, Russia has been coercing Ukraine into its political, economic and cultural space. The country has constructed Ukrainians as inferior, as “little Russians”, as a colonial Other. In his speech on 21 February 2022, Putin stated that Ukraine is not a real country. All over the world, indigenous people have experienced this kind of violence and intentional destruction by a coloniser.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is not only an attack on the country’s land and sovereignty, and it did not start in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea or the occupation of parts of Donbas. Russia has been leading a colonial war of slow violence against Ukraine for centuries, erasing us as a people, society and culture.
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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-war-feminists-we-must-lobby-for-air-defence/
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