UKRAINE AND THE CLIMATES OF WAR AND PEACE

A talk by Adrian Ivakhiv

How is the Russo-Ukrainian war an environmental war? What can Ukrainian responses to the war teach us about trauma and resilience in the emerging “multipolar world disorder”? In this audio-visual presentation, UVM professor emeritus Adrian Ivakhiv will discuss Ukrainian experiences of the war, ecocide, geopolitics, and his collaborative work with over 30 Ukrainian scholars and artists on the book “Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth” (2025).

Donations will be accepted to support civilian defense initiatives in Ukraine

“Terra Invicta” is published by McGill-Queen’s University Press and can be ordered here: https://www.mqup.ca/terra-invicta-products-9780228025832.php

Political philosopher Slavoj Žižek writes about the book:  

“Urgently needed, Terra Invicta focuses on the catastrophic environmental impact of the Russian aggression on Ukraine. It demonstrates how the genocidal Russian attack systematically destroys natural resources, renders large domains uninhabitable, and endangers nuclear power plants. New habitats are emerging where old forms of life were destroyed. Ivakhiv’s volume makes it clear that there is no choice between ecological concerns and struggle against military aggression: in Ukraine, they are two moments of the same struggle. For this reason alone, Terra Invicta deserves to become an instant classic, a volume that everyone who wants to grasp the contours of our global crisis should read.”

And Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov writes:

“The war in Ukraine affects the ecology of nature and the ecology of consciousness throughout the world. This book is the best way to understand today’s Ukraine and the impact of Russian aggression on your life, no matter what country you live in.”

Adrian Ivakhiv holds the J. S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, and is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Thought and Culture at the University of Vermont. He is author or editor of several books in environmental cultural and media studies, and has conducted research in Ukraine since 1989. “Terra Invicta” emerges from research funded by a Fulbright Scholarship held at Freie Universität Berlin in 2023.