Person:

Mateo, Emma

When a country sees multiple mass mobilisations over time, what accounts for variation in where protest occurs across the different protest waves? This article examines the case of mass protests in Ukraine 1990-2004, exploring how the emergence and development of activist networks aligns with changes in the geospatial dispersion of protest over time. It draws on archives and interviews with activists made available by The Three Revolutions Project, and newspaper reports from Ukrainska Pravda, Korrespondent.net and Radio Svoboda, utilising protest event analysis, along with QGIS software to visually represent findings. The article presents novel empirical findings on the geospatial scope of protest events across Ukraine from 1990 onwards, and demonstrates some of the ways in which regional activist networks expanded, developed, and sought cross-cleavage collaboration, aiming to facilitate increasing nationwide mobilisation. It provides valuable context for understanding subsequent Ukrainian mobilisation, such as the 2013-14 Euromaidan protest, and ongoing resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion.

When a society comes under attack, what distinguishes citizens who engage in the war effort from those who do not? Moreover, recognising the multi-dimensionality of citizen wartime engagement, what explains variation in participation? Employing five waves of original survey data from Ukraine (2022–2024), we operationalise mode, type and degree of civilian wartime engagement, proposing a theory of a “commitment to the cause” and “duty to defend it”. Regression analyses show that opposing territorial compromise is associated with combatant engagement, whilst support for democracy, and reporting a strong sense of civic duty, are strongly associated with civilian and particularly direct action engagement. Panel analysis suggests that when their civic duty increases citizens are also more likely to begin new action.