In a personal essay, Olga Burlyuk explains how following and participating in debates on Russia's war against Ukraine is painful not only in an emotional way, but also on an intellectual level. She points to the bouncy logics and factual fallacies surrounding debates on the war, and calls on her readers to first question the questions, before commencing on a search for answers.

 Pedestrians walk at a flea market as smoke rises in the distance following the Russian missile attack, in Kyiv on April 6, 2025. Photo: Roman Pilipey / ANP / AFP

I am a scholar of Ukraine from Ukraine. 'Ukrainian squared'.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, countless people in professional contexts of all possible formats have remarked (in genuinely-well-meaning and positively-not-well-meaning ways) that 'this' must be very 'emotional' and 'painful' for me.

'It' is. Emotional. And painful. Duh. As I articulated to my students at the University of Amsterdam: there is nothing wrong with being emotional in the face of a catastrophe as immense and heartbreaking as a genocidal war; this or any other. One should only get worried (and promptly checked!) if such an emotional response does not surge. 'To think is an act. To feel is a fact', as Clarice Lispector writes in The Hour of the Star. 

What is less understood and remarked upon, however, is the intellectual pain I experience as a scholar, educator, and thinker from following and participating in the debate on the war. Maybe it is my deep commitment to 'common sense as an analytical method', as I humorously tell my students. Or maybe it is my training as a lawyer and all the classes in formal logic that we had had to take in law school. Or maybe it’s my being 'a scholar of Ukraine' and having spent 15+ years researching Russia’s imperial violence, past and present. Or maybe it’s my being Ukrainian and the intergenerational knowledge of the said imperial violence. I recently read an article by Lumey and colleagues on type 2 diabetes in Ukrainians who were foetuses (!) during the Holodomor famine in 1932-33. These Ukrainians, living in the 21st century, developed diabetes as a result of Russia’s imperial violence against Ukraine from before they were born. Let that sink in. A whole new dimension to embodied intergenerational trauma.

Olga Burlyuk

Politicoloog

Olga Burlyuk is universitair docent gespecialiseerd in Europese externe betrekkingen bij de afdeling politicologie van de Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Whichever reason may be behind the pain (or, more likely: a combination), I experience intellectual pain when…

…everyone talks about 'Ukraine war' and 'war in Ukraine' – whereas, if anything, it is a 'Russia war' and a 'war by Russia'. No Russia = no war. No Ukraine = no Ukraine. As Andriy Tyushka wrote in his article, 'in Ukraine crisis we trust': distorted labels distort the knowledge distort the problem distort the solutions. The continuous use of 'Ukraine war' mislocates Ukraine as the source of the problem and so renders it the problem to be solved. An excellent example of Sara Ahmed’s argument on complaining about abuses of power. Ahmed observes a gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. Spoiler: often times, it is the complainant who is quickly seen as the problem to be solved, instead of the power abuser. As a result, the complaining party is silenced or removed altogether, while the actual problem remains unaddressed.

…everyone is debating what kind of a peace deal to conclude with Russia – whereas we know that Russia has never honoured a deal it concluded, not a peace deal, not with Ukraine, not since it invaded Ukraine in 2014. Observers who enthusiastically leapt at 'peace talks, finally!' in spring 2025 seem to have forgotten that there had been over 200 rounds of peace talks with Russia since 2014, which resulted in 20+ ceasefire agreements and all led to the same outcome: nothing, absolutely nothing. And, sure enough: the latest of the ceasefire agreements - 'reached' by Trump and Putin over the phone in March 2025 - was being violated as it was being communicated to the public. Was it Otto von Bismarck who said an agreement with Russia was not worth the paper it was written on? Or is it folklore? Either way, Ukrainians seem to have learned the lesson: according to an opinion poll from February 2025, 83% of Ukrainians believe Ukraine should only consider a ceasefire if security guarantees are provided by the West. And according to an opinion poll from August 2024, 60% of Ukrainians are convinced that Russia will attack Ukraine again in the future, regardless of how the current war ends. There you go.

…everyone is debating how much pressure Trump may or may not put on Ukraine in the pursuit of peace – whereas it is not pressure for peace but for surrender. 'Two big differences', as they say in Odesa to emphasize a colossal difference between any two things. (And, since we are at it: occupation is not peace either. The number currently stands at 150,000 Russian war crimes, and it might require several tribunals to address them all.) You have to agree that it is absurd and illogical to demand peace from the defending party! Especially when no such pressure is put on the invading party. I saw a spot-on meme on this the other day: Putin and Trump sitting side by side; Putin says, 'I want a very big piece of Ukraine!', and Trump says, 'Putin wants peace, you see?! Those bloody Ukrainians are warmongers!' 

...everyone is wondering what deal would be 'acceptable to President Zelensky' – whereas we know that, unlike his counterpart Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky is not in a position to dictate. Ukraine is a democracy, and Ukrainians are keeping a close watch. In recent history, Ukrainians have successfully challenged presidents and governments they disliked every 10 years or so. And we are back at the utility of checking in with the public opinion. Ironically, the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan / Revolution of Dignity earned Ukraine its only mention in the EU’s House of European History: thematic section 'values', exhibit 'democracy' and 'civic protest'. [This is not a joke. Other than this, Ukraine does not feature in EU’s vision of European history.]

…everyone is dismayed at the fact that Ukraine, a country defending itself in the war of aggression with nearly 20% of its territory and millions of its population occupied by Russia, did not hold regular presidential elections in April 2024 – whereas it is the absence of free elections in Russia for some two and half decades, with Putin holding power in one disguise or another since the late 1990s, that enabled this war in the first place. Elections in wartime are prohibited by Ukraine’s Constitution, period. And those genuinely concerned about the state and future of democracy in Ukraine will be reassured by the latest research by Alexseev and Dembitskyi who demonstrate that, contrary to all theoretical expectations in political science, popular demand for democracy in Ukraine increased after Russia’s invasion in 2014 and spiked after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

…everyone is debating how much support to provide Ukraine and for how long – out of goodwill, out of self-interest, out of [insert as relevant] – whereas we know that the US, the UK and France are obligated to support Ukraine fully under the Budapest memorandum of 1994. 'Nukes for security guarantees'; the idea was straightforward. I was 7-8 years old then and remember it being discussed on TV (and by adults everywhere).

…everyone is debating how much of its minerals Ukraine should pledge as payback for Western/US support – whereas Ukraine is the invaded party, not the invading one. I do appreciate a refresher on 'the map of minerals', which we had to draw in geography class as kids. But truly, if this goes through, it will be the first time in history that the attacked country will be paying reparations! #precedent 

…everyone persistently (or is it insistently?) talks about Ukraine’s 'territories' and 'lands' – the notions that have now miraculously been extended to include under-surface minerals but, ironically, are yet to be extended to include above-surface Ukrainians populating the said territories and lands. Minor detail.

I could continue with examples.

An elderly woman walks past residential buildings heavily damaged by air attacks in Kostyantynivka, eastern Donetsk region, on March 17, 2025. Photo: Roman Pilipey / ANP / AFP

Analysing the debate on Russia’s war against Ukraine, we could talk about epistemic injustice and epistemic imperialism, or the belief that what one knows from a privileged perspective can be exported wholesale to contexts one knows little or nothing about. We could talk about Westsplaining, or 'speaking without sufficient expertise but from a position of authority, often making false projections and assumptions'. We could talk about the replication of these in feminist debates and the breach of solidarity between Western feminists, those in the Global South and those in the nations and societies subjected to Russian imperialism. We could talk about the need for epistemic humility, about quiet as a research strategy and about the responsibility to remain silent when commenting on an ongoing war – particularly if you are not commenting from a bomb shelter.

But truth is: you don’t need to be Ukrainian to empathize with Ukraine, 'you only need to be a human', to quote Nobel Peace Prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk. In a similar vein, it does not take a critical scholar to feel intellectual pain at the bouncy logics and factual fallacies whichever way one looks: all it takes is to question the questions before commencing on a search for answers. As I tried to illustrate with the examples above: we are continuously entertaining on merit questions that are crooked from the get-go; structurally, logically, theoretically, philosophically, ethically, empirically… you name it. And so I, and others with me, drain ourselves by 'setting the facts straight'. A futile exercise when one holds no control of the agenda.

I am in intellectual pain. My brain hurts. Doesn’t yours?

P.S. For the music-loving readers: I found Maurice Ravel’s Bolero to be a great soundtrack to writing this piece, and I believe it might go well with reading it, too. Did you know that Ravel composed Bolero on commission from Ida Rubinstein, a star dancer of Paris at the time, born in a Ukrainian Jewish family in Kharkiv?