The conference contribution is based upon a book section "Between right-wing discourse and liberal policy: the curious case of Ukrainian migration into Poland" for "Fatigue" (Horizon2020 ITN) edited volume (forthcoming with UCL Press in 2023), but aims to actualise and contextualise it with new data and reflections. The book chapter analyses the impact of Polish right-wing populist discourse on Ukrainian migrants and the implications for their self-identification. The data this analysis builds on is 40 semi-structured interviews conducted in 5 locations in Poland in the period July-September 2021. Just after the first draft of the resulting book chapter was ready, Russia invaded Ukraine, and a tectonic shift in migration and reception processes took place. To contextualise my findings by adopting a comparative angle on the situation before and after February 24th 2022, I returned to my respondents one year later, half a year after the start of the full-scale war. Striving to capture experiences and changes in perceptions, I conducted 12 repeat interviews from August to December 2022. These new findings are being turned into a special issue article for the Journal of Conflict Transformation and Security (forthcoming September 2023), which I hope to present at the UACES annual conference. Given the unprecedented nature of the recent migrant influx, the EU's open reception, and the security threat that provoked it, it is essential to study these developments carefully. They have implications not only for the Ukrainian population itself but for the changing nature of the EU's society, labour market, political and security architectures, as well as the state of democracy in both Ukraine and the EU. Analysing these in my paper, I pay special attention to populist threats stemming from Ukrainian migration in Poland in particular, and in the EU in general.

Various explanations have been put forward to explore Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its implications. For some, Russia’s actions, though regrettable, are the legitimate response to Western actions: Russia has been a ‘good citizen’ until provoked, having previously recognised and respected Ukraine’s borders. For others, Russia has proved itself as a revisionist power, seeking to redraw the not only the post-Soviet borders but also key tenets of the international order. Paradoxically, in the search for a peace settlement, many rely on international law – namely the very same medicine that Moscow has scorned. EU experts have been particularly prone to viewing technocratic, functional agreements as the solution to the problem, instead of investigating the sources of Russia’s puzzling approach to international law.

This paper unpacks Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in seeming contradiction of its prior legal undertakings is not an ad hoc act of revisionism but the culmination of a long-standing strategy. We draw on Carl Schmitt’s conceptions to show how Russia’s deep-seated understanding of its own sovereignty as a great power has shaped a complex relationship with Ukraine since 1991. While Russia always sought to maintain the veneer of international law, it developed a distinct legal regime characterised by strategic legal ambiguity, selective legality and reliance on extra-legal pressure points. International agreements have been a key part of Russia’s toolbox in maintaining control over the post-Soviet region. Outwardly, Russia has demanded a western recognition of Russia’s right of control, thereby a de facto demand for limiting the reach of universal legal norms by depicting them as hostile actions undermining Russia’s own conception of sovereignty. Therefore, lasting peace settlement in Europe cannot be reached without understanding Russia’s challenge to legal universalism.

Russia has a long history of engagement with its diaspora and kin populations in the near abroad. Since 2014 Russian elites instrumentalized transborder ethnic ties and embarked on a strategic project of transnational identity construction, targeting Ukrainian population and particularly its Russian-speaking part. The mechanisms of this policy represent a set of ideas employed at discursive, institutional and legislative levels. These not only provide people with a particular vision of the war and its reasons, offer interpretation of their history, but also penetrate deeply into the very self-perception of the people about who they are. By deploying symbolic and discursive power over the targeted population, Russian political elites tried to achieve political identity shift which alienate this population from the core Ukrainian nation associated with the ruling Ukrainian elites and align their political preferences with Russia and its ruling elites. The aim of the study is to analyze Russian kin-state policy towards Ukrainian population during the war (since 2014) through the lenses of extraterritorial identity construction process. The study seeks to explore the mechanisms of this policy, benchmark key moments of its evolution and its outcomes, revealing the differences and similarities in response of the targeted population in two crucial moments – in 2014 and 2022.