War and politics. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and refugee crisis on the eastern EU border from the perspective of border studies
Wojciech Opioła
University of Opole, Institute of Political Science and Public Administrationhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2473-3375
Bartosz Czepil
University of Opole, Institute of Political Science and Public Administrationhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4907-795X
Marcin Dębicki
University of Wrocławhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6510-0614
Ewa Ganowicz
University of Opole, Institute of Political Science and Public Administrationhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-6558-5976
Justyna Kajta
SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanitieshttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2428-8876
Katalin Kovály
Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences in Budapest, Geographical Institutehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-8554-6816
Łukasz Moll
University of Wrocławhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2251-9351
Natalia Niedźwiecka-Iwańczak
University of Wrocławhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-7894-3274
Elżbieta Opiłowska
University of Wrocławhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7084-2631
Grigorii Pidgrushniy
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of GeographyAbstract
Since February 24, 2022, we have been witnessing the next stage of what began in the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian War: a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. For the first time in the history of the European Union, the intensive armed conflict is now approaching the border of the EU and Schengen Zone. The consequences of war: the refugee crisis, humanitarian aid, and economic problems have affected EU countries both immediately and directly. While keeping in mind the human tragedy and the tragedy of Ukraine, we would like to address a few important questions from the perspective of regional and border scholars. From this perspective, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is another stage of the new political order in Europe, preceded by the war in Ukraine that started in 2014, the 2015 migration crisis, 2021 Belarus-EU border crisis, which altogether – from the perspective of the border studies – could be described as re-bordering and securitization of borderlands.
In this joint editorial, we address four main questions. Firstly, how we can interpret the Russian invasion in the wider, historical context, taking the frontier thesis as an explanatory category developed by Turner (1994). Secondly, the Ukrainian refugee crisis, in the context of the previous Belarusian-EU border crisis, is a multi-layered issue, where religion, gender, geopolitics, and rationales meet. Thirdly, apart from the military and political actions, war and refugee flux could be seen from the perspective of a grassroots movement of aid. Fourthly, the war in Ukraine brings uncertainty and questions about democracy and peace in Western Europe.
Authors
Grigorii PidgrushniyStatistics
Downloads
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Border and Regional Studies

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Elżbieta Opiłowska, Kamilla Dolińska, „O człowieku pogranicza“ – recenzja książki Beaty Halickiej „Życie na pograniczach. Zbigniew Anthony Kruszewski. Biografia“ , Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza ASPRA-JR 2019, 430 ss. , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 7 No. 2 (2019)
- Bartosz Czepil, Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 2 No. 2 (2014)
- Boris Mattoš, Wojciech Opioła, Determinants of cross-border cooperation between Austria and Slovak Republic. The role of Bratislava and Vienna in the development of mutual contacts , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 2 No. 2 (2014)
- Pavel Šaradín, Radomir Sztwiertnia, Ewa Ganowicz, Opinions and attitudes of political representatives of Opole and Olomouc , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 7 No. 2 (2019)
- Wojciech Opioła, Editorial: More divided than ever. About the border walls in the twenty-first century , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 6 No. 2 (2018)
- Ewa Ganowicz, The political activity of the German Minority in the Opolskie Voivodeship , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 4 No. 2 (2016)
- Marcin Dębicki, The ontology of miracle, the exegesis of the question mark and other inspirations from the Polish-German divided towns - as an aftermath of the monograph by the Wrocław sociologists of borderland , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 7 No. 2 (2019)
- Bartosz Czepil, On an applicability of the concept of border in studying corruption , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 4 No. 2 (2016)
- Elżbieta Opiłowska, Joanna Frątczak-Müller, Anna Mielczarek-Żejmo: Euroregion. Od partnerstwa do sieci współpracy transgranicznej [Euroregion. From Partnership to a Cross-border Cooperation Network], 2019, Warsaw: Elipsa (review) , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 8 No. 1 (2020)
- Wojciech Opioła, Bartosz Czepil, On the significance of the category of borderland in the contemporary Polish political science , Border and Regional Studies: Vol. 1 No. 1 (2013)