Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 204: Ukraine: Dispatches from the Place of Imminence — with Svitlana Matviyenko
Speakers: Alyha Bardi, Am Johal, Svitlana Matviyenko
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Alyha Bardi 0:02
Hello listeners! I’m Alyha with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Dr. Svitlana Matviyenko, a Professor of Critical Media Analysis in the School of Communication. Svitlana talks about her experiences living in Ukraine over the past year, documenting a rising militarization and being attentive to the social changes that war imposes. Am and Svitlana also discuss the asymmetrical cases of misinformation between Ukraine and Russia, as well as how the invasion has merged her research interests of media and cyberwar. This episode was recorded on February 21st, 2023. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:58
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week. We have a very special guest with us this week, Svitlana Matviyenko, who has previously been a guest on the show. Welcome Svitlana.
Svitlana Matviyenko 1:13
Thanks Am. And thanks very much for inviting me to talk about Ukraine, about the situation, about the war. I'm glad I can share some things that I've seen, understood, or even not understood about it.
Am Johal 1:31
Svitlana, maybe we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit for audience members who haven't met you before?
Svitlana Matviyenko 1:40
Sure. My name is Svitlana Matviyenko, and I am Assistant Professor in the School of Communications, Simon Fraser University. I also work at the Digital Democracies Institute where I'm Associate Director, run different projects there, working groups. Many of them have to do with coloniality, decoloniality, in the realm of the post Soviet Union, and its sphere of control. Also thinks about environment, media, how those things intersect, how we can speak about media through the lenses of environmental critique, or how we read environments and materials with the help of media critique.
Am Johal 2:32
Svitlana, you happened to be in Ukraine visiting your parents when the invasion happened last year, and I'm wondering if you can sort of begin by just sharing the context in which you ended up in Ukraine kind of almost accidentally kind of stumbling into the broader geopolitical context there.
Svitlana Matviyenko 2:54
The scope of this accident, and there were several of them that led to my travel to Ukraine, but also to my very long stay there, which wasn't planned like that. Where really kind of the scope was kind of so huge, that sometimes it really looks like a movie, or some kind of novel, etc, maybe something that I still will write at some point. But anyway, after this very long COVID time when no travel was possible, I obviously had the need to see my parents who are in their 80s and very fragile, and who are getting terribly ill already and needed care. So I was really waiting and losing tickets, buying and losing those tickets and trying to get out somehow to see them for quite some time, maybe for a year and a half. And then finally, finally, I managed to do so in February 2021. That's when I got to Ukraine, and on the first day when I arrived to my little town, and it's very hard to get there. So it takes you a week of travel from Vancouver—a little less than a week—but still through trains and planes and stops and hotels and conflicting schedules. So as soon as I arrived there, next day, my mother broke her spine. And then suddenly, still shocked by everything, of not seeing them for so long, I had to deal with this very complex situation and she needed a very difficult surgery. Of that—at that time, I thought it wouldn't be possible—and that's how I entered a very long and exhausting kind of fight with Ukrainian bureaucracy and corruption in the medical sphere. Discovering some amazing people on the way, actually, some very talented surgeons, discovering that such complicated surgeries that probably would have cost some kind of half a million in Canada was... The cost of it was about $3,000 in Ukraine, and it could be performed in my little town, by people there.
So all of those things are kind of, you know, conflicting realities, and etc, were themselves quite interesting. And I'm writing about them. But then because my parents were old, and I was working kind of very hard to make my mother able again, and it took about a half a year for her to recover, to start working again, while I turned into a nurse, and was working with her every day, making those steps. Then suddenly, there, both my father and mother's health status kind of collapsing and surgery after surgery after surgery kind of sucked me in totally and leaving was completely impossible. My health started having problems, etc. And then when it already was the end of 2021, I kind of contemplated a possibility of returning to Canada. And was thinking of actually doing it sometime in spring. And then the full scale invasion happened, which definitely changed it all. And made it extremely hard and impossible for me to travel. On the one hand, but on the other hand, again, the question of leaving my parents or taking them with me, was also kind of impossible to resolve. And that's how I—a war scholar, critical infrastructures scholar, information war scholar—stuck in the midst of something, kind of most intense case of study, perhaps, that I have ever known, or have ever started, in my realm, in my field. And now I could witness it myself from within.
Am Johal 7:35
Svitlana, I remember being on Zoom calls with you in the days prior to the invasion. We were working on a thing where Maria Ressa was coming into town. And just a sense of what is going to happen, it seemed very surreal. And when things did take that turn for the worse, how quickly things happen. I happened to be in Haifa in 2006 when the Israel Hezbollah war broke out. So when the rockets landed in Haifa, and things deteriorated so quickly, and in the case of your context, when the invasion did happen, it almost didn't seem like it was going to happen right up until the very last minute. And I'm wondering, you know, with your armature of cyber war studies, and all of these things, and somebody who has the capacity to break down propaganda and all of these kinds of things, how the early period of the war, your reading of it now that some time has passed.
Svitlana Matviyenko 8:40
I didn't think the war would erupt in this full scale intensity. The war began quite before that, obviously. And even though sometimes it's not talked in this way in the West, but the war began in 2014. And you may even find some other beginnings of this war depending on what you're looking at, whether some infrastructure or invasion, as you know, building some Crimean bridge, for example, right. So if we take infrastructures, some of the kind of means of imposing certain influence or means of occupation sometimes. So that was an example. And there are other things like this. However, what the consensus among Ukrainians—and I shared—is that the beginning of the war was in 2014. And what was happening in February last year, we call it the full scale invasion. So I didn't think that this full scale invasion would happen. Although I thought that some kind of intensification of the war, or some kind of partial intrusions here and there, especially in the east, or maybe in the south could have happened. That's at least how it seemed to me then. And when I speak to people today, here in Ukraine, you know, like a year ago, like even a little more than a year, I heard more have doubts about this full scale invasion. Today, it's very rare, people almost forgot that they had those doubts. Today, when you hear people, everyone will tell you that they knew. They knew it would happen. And it's interesting to observe that, partly, you know, maybe people just deceive themselves. But partly, it's because they, from this distance, they're probably more capable of kind of, you know, seeing certain signs or seeing things that from now, it's clear that they will lead into something huge, terrifying, big, like this full scale invasion. So in myself, I catch myself here and there on new understandings of certain kinds of circumstances. So it's always interesting for me, that's why you know, when people say, like, I knew, or I didn't know, so what does this knowledge mean? Right? So. But if I can concretize this knowledge in certain practices or certain behaviors, for me it comes to things like, how did I prepare myself? Did I do anything, like, in my everyday experience, that would kind of, you know, express my certainty or knowledge about the approaching war.
And myself, I said, you know, people were saying here and there that you need to have the emergency backpack, for example, that you need to have things there. So I didn't have that emergency backpack. And, but I had several online shopping carts, where I put things for that emergency backpack, and I never made the purchase. And it's also interesting for me, does that constitute knowledge? What is that? What kind of behavior is that? Right? So I had everything there in this virtual shopping carts. But I actually composed my emergency backpack on the first day of the full scale invasion. In the morning, it happened. And during the day, myself and my friend Serhiy, we went downtown in my little town, and started looking for things. Radios, hand-lights, all sorts of different meds. And everything was already sold out. Because people massively bought it in that very morning, in fact, even gallons of water, you wouldn't be able to buy water, like bottles of water during this day. Right, so and that's what kind of, you know, is interesting that I was afraid, but at the same time, I thought if I would start kind of really buying something, or composing that backpack, it would almost constitute certain paranoia. I was afraid to fall into certain kind of paranoid behavior. I still believe that this war is a war or would be the war against all logics, it would be absolutely kind of suicidal war for the Russian Federation itself. And knowing its kind of self preservational instinct, I thought they wouldn't do it. But then it happened.
Am Johal 14:06
Yeah, there's a kind of air of absolute enmity in terms of the framing of the Russian position that's present. I'll come back to that a little bit later, but I wanted to, you've been writing dispatches. Wonderful, eloquent, personal. It's a kind of, it's an act of witnessing, in the moment in this place that you find yourself in. And when I think about like, being in Vancouver, it's about as far away from conflict as one can get in many ways, and the mainstream news media coverage can give you a certain type of framing, which just follows a kind of play by play, but it misses out on the incredible impact on civilians. The casualties of the war and also the psychological effects of the duration as the invasion carries on. And in terms of the participants in the war, as well. Now, I'm wondering if you can speak just a little bit to the dispatches that you've been writing as an act of witnessing in this moment.
Svitlana Matviyenko 15:15
I started those dispatches, although they were not called like that. It was a sort of a diary. The diary that I started before the full scale invasion, I started it in January. And some of it is not even published on the website. Some of it remained drafts. But there's a purpose of that writing, was observing and documenting the crawling militarization, which bothered me very much at that moment. It had to do with my disbelief about the possibility of the full scale invasion. And I thought then that this militarization that started slowly, but then was accelerating and accelerating through December and January, I saw how it started running. And it scared me very much, it scared me in the way that it penetrated all the kind of, you know, started penetrating all the dimensions of everyday life. Our experiences of how we saw things, how we behaved, what we dreamt, what we talked about, how we spend money, how we communicated between themselves, what we saw on the streets, and so on. So suddenly, this science of militarization were everywhere. So you would see people in the uniforms, you would see more military people, some training started here and there.
And myself, still before the full scale invasion, had a very curious incident, I would say, when I was quite interested in how the local defense groups were forming, and I wanted to see how they train and what they are about. And I asked my friend, who had a relation to those groups, to introduce me, and to bring me to see the training. And somehow he apparently didn't understand me, and told me that we would go and see it. And one morning, we got in the cab, and the cab brought us somewhere behind the town, where a man with a bag of weapons was waiting for us. I was kind of surprised by what's happening. And I understood that it wasn't something that I expected or even asked. And then it appeared that I myself was getting a military training by a specialist, a professional soldier. So we went in the fields. And he started teaching both of us—my friend and I—how to disassemble and assemble Kalashnikov. How to fight, how to point, how to take this point in pose, what should be in our backpack, how important it was to not to have scars or to treat scars immediately, and so on and on with this entire, you know, kind of set of techniques of what I actually call it with this kind of almost mental militarization, right. So militarization of thinking, of relating to the environment, everything. But it was very useful lesson. And they, we had like four hours, so something there in the fields, and then I came back home. And when I came back home, thinking about that kind of interesting situation that happened, I realized that things, you know, started kind of making connections almost behind my will. I didn't mean to be there, and suddenly, I am getting that lesson. I didn't want to know this, and this, and suddenly now I do. And I've really felt like a subject in the sea of things in the sea of things, of all those military martial assemblages that have been assembling already. And this probably when, and I remember, it was February 17th. That's probably when maybe for the first time, I thought, the war is coming. The big war is coming.
And this, you know, again, bringing you back to what this intention to document, to write about this militarization, creation of these connections and relations, its military assemblages. I thought in December, in January, that this militarization, and the fact that it's irreversible, that it wouldn't be impossible then later very difficult to take all these practices out of our everydayness. I thought, I have to document how they were created. And I thought that would be the worst, you know, that Ukrainian people would have to live through in 2022. Right, so this whole writing, this witnesses was my resistance to militarization. And half year later, I was going everywhere and asking for weapons. And, you know, that kind of change is a scary change. But this change is happening. And I think this change, which might be something that many people wouldn't take very easily and still kind of hold on to their pacifism, I think we should be very attentive to this change. And understand its real meaning, that the person like I was ready to go and take the weapon. The person is a person like I actually now, asks for more weapon, more help to Ukraine. So this change is happening and this is very much about that perspective. It's not just about something subjective, as I was told before. Ukrainians, I was told, they have no choice. They just have to say this because they are there. So something really scary has happened. It's going on. And the time for that pacifism, as we knew it, is over. Maybe we should think about other ways of imagining and creating peace. But the way we had it was delusional. Now, it seems to me.
Am Johal 22:36
There's, you know, of course, with your background as a media theorist, a scholar of cyber war, when you're witnessing an active invasion in your country, how have you sort of read the information war, the propaganda coming from the Russian side, from various places, there's multiple actors and different ways they enter into the public sphere, but also, I guess, domestically on the Ukrainian side. There is a need to maintain a kind of patriotism and a will to resist, which requires a kind of attentiveness to the types of mobilization and communication that does that work. And I'm wondering, you know, from your vantage point, how you read into these approaches, and of course, you're not in Kyiv, you were in a different place. And so even access to information can become a challenge, right?
Svitlana Matviyenko 23:36
When we think about these different levels or vectors of disinformation, one important emphasis I have to make, and it is about not using the conjunction 'and 'when we say this information in Russia and disinformation in Ukraine. These are very asymmetrical actors in this situation, and the meanings of this disinformation, even though kind of in some very simple way, we always imagined two sides. No, it's not like this, there is no end between misinformation over there and some sort of, let's say, propaganda, or misinformation, as it always happens on the other side, let me begin with Ukrainian. So of course, as you mentioned, and as it's always happens in war, there are different strategies and different ways of kind of maintaining the mind, the moods, the spirit of the population of civilians, and the military. And of course, if you do it, you do it in a way that very often kind of uses quite familiar propagandistic arsenal of things, right. So you do propaganda. You kind of boost the spirit with certain propaganda. You hide certain information for particular reasons, for security reasons, etc. So and if you hide information, you also kind of in a certain way, misinforming, but then you cannot inform population, right? In the city. So war creates a very particular environment for even thinking of mis- or disinformation. We cannot really apply the word that we take from kind of so-called peace, right, or from other times of life and apply it here, it's just not that anymore. And this is one of the major misunderstandings that I constantly deal with, because I am often asked to comment about some aspects of, let's say, for example, Ukrainian misinformation, and I recognize it's there, right, but you need to understand what is happening, and what, in fact, why it's happening, etc. There were, even though I recognized the significance of particular kinds of cases, episodes of informing population in this or that way. My major—I understood the purpose—but my major dissatisfaction was with the appearance of certain political figures that kind of were just functioning or acting as almost memes, like media memes, and gaining the credit of that popularity. Exploiting this very complex and dangerous kind of situation, right? So they are gaining trust, and then at the same time, getting their own credit for it. Right. So there are characters like that, and I've been already quite vocal about them. Oleksii Arestovych, who used to be one of kind of, not official figures, but still visible presences in the presidential office is a very vivid example of kind of that. So, you know, it all has to do not only with mis- and disinformation, but also with certain, let's say, playing the audience, gaining credit, platformatization of kind of their popularity and whatnot. So it was about, very manipulative, kind of, you know, techniques, regimes of communication that they were able to establish using, again, their access to power. So that's that. And there are other things like that, right?
So and this is one kind of situation with Ukraine. But when we speak about the Russian Federation, and the, you know, disinformation, misinformation, information, well there it has a very different type of manipulation and very different purpose. Let's say if we are not told in Ukraine, some thing's, right. So, very often, it is because there is danger of knowing or because it can create panic or because just this information should be used in a certain way in silence. But in Russia, of course, we have this, first of all, manipulation of public opinion, right. So channeling and channeling the emotions of anger and frustration, and also creating the image of the enemy. And if I name just these things, and they are huge, you could see the difference, that we are looking at asymmetrical cases. Very much asymmetrical. So for example, if we take this idea of channeling emotion, channeling anger. So many regions of Russia has been extremely exploited, poor. There is a lot of frustration in other regions about the regime, the power, the fact that power is not passed from one president to another, but this kind of whole scene of appropriation and consolidation of power in one hands, kleptocratic clan, and so on. Right? So there is a lot of frustration in different classes, in different strata of population. And so this frustration hasn't been used very well by all these talking heads of Russian propaganda. Sometimes, and in Digital Democracies Institute, many different groups and projects are very much focused on the fact that misinformation or disinformation, where it's very much about affect, is something beyond the fact. Right, it's something beyond a particular kind of statement of a piece of information formulation. It has other dimensions. And so what was happening there in Russia on Russian TV specifically, is a very successful channeling of all this frustrations and anger and see no future and whatnot by the talking heads of Russian propaganda. Vladimir Solovyov and many other names that you’ve probably heard of. Head of Russia TV, Margarita Simonyan. So popular among progressive circles in America, the top hat of Russian propaganda. So, Am, these people they were, they are able, they're very good at speaking affect. And sometimes it really doesn't matter what they say. What matters is how they do it, how and when they repeat it, what kind of connections they make, and sometimes very random. So it's very difficult to make sense of that disinformation and misinformation. Sometimes the way they connect looks like a random and crazy poetics. But it's happening and it's working. And we're able to install in the heads of many smart people in the world. And of course not so smart people, the idea of Ukrainian nazis. It's fascinating to me.
Am Johal 32:07
In the clips that I've seen circulating on social media of the Russian sort of talk shows where one person says something outlandish and full of hyperbole and lies, and then the other two or three people join in and go even further. And so it is this, like, the window of reality of the analysis and how it, the more outrageous it is, it has this sort of traction on social media, and it's incredibly troubling to plot. Svitlana, I was going to ask you about, in terms of how news of the invasion enters into the West, and you know, broadly speaking, there's the kind of European narrative but also in the U.S. And so the invasion gets framed in a particular type of way. But I'm wondering, in your own reading of it, you know, what is sort of missing from the analysis? Or what could add more nuance or context into how the context of the invasion is being described?
Svitlana Matviyenko 33:18
Well, among many things, I could mention at least two. And they are related. So one has been misunderstanding of what the Russian Federation is about. Misunderstanding and overlooking the Russian Federation as a powerful and rogue empire. And now I will explain how this is related to other big misunderstandings that I've been noticing and thinking about a lot. And it has to do with determining or singling out a certain kind of reason cause of this war. And obviously, you hear a lot that the West, it's the West's fault, right? So it's interesting, whenever I speak to a taxi driver in whatever country I always hear from them. Like the first response to the fact that I'm Ukrainian and from Ukraine is they tell me that it's the fault of the United States. So I assume that it's extremely spread. Right. So I know that it's extremely spread understanding. So and in Ukraine, for example, the different idea or understanding is taken as a core, which has to do with this particular imperial colonial relation between Russia and Ukraine. And the way how I see it, I'm not alone in this. There are others who agree with this view that this war is very overdetermined. And there is no way to find one, even level at how the events unfold, how this war unfolds, or what caused it. And this is, at least, at least, those two things. One is that it is an inter-imperial war. And it has to do with this major redistribution of power and control over the world. And it also at the same time, caused and unfolds along the lines of imperialism and colonialism of the Russian Federation, of all these legacies that were never addressed. But in fact, were cherished, cherished as a state ideology. Right, and probably it's hard to imagine, and not empire. And I'm not saying that all empires are dead. They're very much alive. But it's hard to imagine another empire that could be so proud of all the evils it did before. And the Russian Federation is one of those that proudly speaks about all its expansion, exploration, and conquest, right. So you wouldn't hear ever this discourse anywhere, but you would definitely hear it kind of there. In many different forms more and less explicit. And so these two things happening at the same time. And the relation between them is very complex, inter-imperial and colonial-imperial, right. And in this inter-imperial war, the reason like while we are speaking now about the tensions in this aggressive redistribution of power and control, there is also kind of an attempt to, you know, to still reach certain agreements, right, so everyone who pushed certain agreements now, very much related to this kind of vector. It's because the capitalist system has to work. And it's because it's extremely comfortable to have one bad empire in the equation.
And it's also because as I heard in one interview, as one European politician told to Ukrainian politician, and I'm sure the same things were told to Russian politician, your corruption, she says, is our economy. And this is because what this kind of, you know, corruption in Russia, but also Ukraine and other kinds of states, there were, again, cherished and supported by those who on the surface in Europe were fighting all this corruption, etc. Right? So this is inter-imperial stuff, right? So they need a bad empire, and it's even good if this empire is also corrupt, because it allows to lift even more restrictions. It allows to do even more things, you know, with easier and etc, right? So you need to help the empire like that. And misunderstanding there was that at some point, this empire could grow into this massive force, that in the end would threaten everyone by all this nukes and whatnot, that was a huge misunderstanding, but this misunderstanding is a kind of something that I think Europe and the West have to be kind of also come to terms and to become responsible. Because they fed a lot into you know, this power and the way how it grew. But at the same time, there is this really strong Imperial kind of you know, force that has to do precisely with Ukrainian situation. It's because Ukraine's location, it's because Russia imagines itself as coming out of Kievan Rus'. It's because it drives its whole mythology from, you know, from this land, from this myth, from these kinds of historical events. It's a kind of soap in some vampiric way and parasitic way depends with on Ukraine. Right. So Ukraine has the most complicated relation because of this, because it kind of the very existence of Ukraine in a certain way jeopardizes Russian historical myth. So in a certain way, that's why it doesn't have to exist. And that's why this statement by the Russian president has it's real. It's not just a delusional something. It just doesn't have to exist. So that Russian myth of identity history and everything would be more realistic. And that is real. It's serious. It's scary. Right? So because our identity has to be stolen in a certain way, right? So when I think about all this demolition of museums and libraries and everything, right, so it's even, I was like just yesterday looking through the statistics of how much of art or objects and all different kinds of historical objects from museums etc. were stolen at this moment. Thankfully, there is a lot of work on going on documenting those things, but when I think about it, it almost look like they're stealing our kinds of evidence. Evidence of history, cultural heritage, right. So they’re taking away those material evidence of our existence.
Am Johal 41:30
Svitlana, in terms of, you know, being inside of the situation, of the invasion, the intensity, the firsthand trauma that you experienced, also the waiting when nothing happens. There's this sort of crossing of thresholds between intensity and those moments where nothing's happening. And I'm wondering, you know, at some point, you're going to return back to Vancouver, which is about as far away as you can get from Ukraine that, you know, how has this experience changed your own subjectivity? Or what? How have you changed through this experience?
Svitlana Matviyenko 42:15
This is an important but very difficult question for me even now. So even after I made my first step out, leaving behind my mother, waiting again, for something to happen within several days, waiting for her calls about her house and whatnot. Thinking of how and why, and what means I can use to get back fast. So I'm still where I am now in Germany. I'm still always seeing myself not as kind of set in a certain place, but open, always open to the necessity to move back fast. And of course, but I also realize it's true that very soon, I will have to come to Canada. And it's very difficult for me, truly to think that. I am a little bit afraid of encountering the general un-awareness of the nuances and specifics of this happening, and I know it will affect me. But well, that's kind of you know, I don't have my choice there. But I do think about this. And one of the ways that I was able to open myself more to this possibility and accept it is that in that, in the end, I thought, there are so many of us from different countries, who live there, and who have this experience of war. And when I think back to those years when I was in Canada, I wonder why I didn't think about it as an important topic, experience, to talk through to see how war fits in the kind of general setup of peace or like some scholars call it so called peace with this understanding that we live in this volatile, fragile world is something that I will carry with me from where I come now. And I want to hear more from people who had similar or different war experiences, to understand how to use them, not just how to live with them, because that's what you know, many of us have been kind of trying to understand, individually or collectively, how to live with those experiences. We know techniques, institutions and ways of sort of approaching this. But I also think how to use this because it's clear to me that we are also entering the time of probably more militant time, let's say that. Or the time of wars of higher intensity that we thought, some years ago would be happening in this entire cyber, whatever. Right? So there was this understanding that all wars, all future wars, would be very much cyber. Right? So even though in our book with Nick Dyer-Witheford, we very much emphasized that cyber war has a kinetic side. But even then, when I was writing that, I could never imagine that this intensity would reach this sort of intensity, with thousands of people dying every day. So therefore, I want to kind of focus more and hear more from other people in places like Vancouver, abroad, or Canada, that— how to use, what can we squeeze out of that experience? Rather than walking— just working it through? To continue to live right, to continue kind of to deal with trauma, it's one thing, but then how to use this, what did we really learn? This question is still unanswered for me. I'm not sure yet. What exactly I learned. So but that's what I'm trying to think about now. Where I am in Germany, and where I will be in Canada.
Am Johal 47:17
Svitlana, of course, you know, with your background as a media theorist and scholar of cyber war. It's one thing to study a topic and have the materials, it's another thing to be inside of a situation, which, you know, you have your theoretical and academic background. But once you're inside of the situation, you must think in so many different ways of new questions that come up or new areas that you maybe want to research in the future. And I'm wondering, yeah, what are the things that you're perplexed by as a researcher and an academic that you think has been under-researched or not looked at in a proper way.
Svitlana Matviyenko 48:02
One thing that is happening in this regard is... convergence of two of my areas of research. So— and they have been cyber war research, and media and environment. And suddenly... and in media and environment, I worked on the projects on Chernobyl, atomic cultures, science and technology studies around nuclear culture and things like that. So and now what I see is the convergence. It happened almost immediately after the full scale invasion, because the first area occupied in Ukraine was the Chernobyl zone. And then very soon, in the beginning of March, the occupation of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant happened. So it's interesting how the Russian forces moved exactly to those kind of... one symbolic centre of nuclear power, another actual very powerful industrial center of production of nuclear power. In this way, I also saw how this nexus of cyber and nuclear has been shaping. And it of course, one of the ways how we can think of, you know, certain space, certain realm that nuclear opens here in conducting cyber war is the space of deterrence. Right. It's the space of deterrence in suddenly, in the time of kind of high technologies. And ever since cyber was still return to this old Cold War techniques. And that's why one of the things that I'm trying to kind of theoretically think about and develop as my next—possibly a book—is this idea of nuclear cyber war that unfolds actually, precisely on those two vectors that I described before: inter-Imperial and colonial-Imperial vector. On the inter-Imperial vector, that's of course, deterrence. And deterrence is a specific but still a type of communication. So that's where redistribution of power happening but also those powers certain even by threatening each other, but still communicate, exchange certain something, exchange science, if you could say.
But then the reason for this colonial-Imperial vector where it's just pure terror, right, so where communication is not allowed, and suspended forever. Nobody communicates there. The terror is produced right here, on the territory of Ukraine, when the rockets fly over the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power stations, right. So two days ago, last time, it happened. When, in summer, they were constantly—the Russian military who occupies a nuclear power station—they were constantly disconnecting the station from power supplies. And the station, in fact, does have very ruptured connection to electricity, because, again, Ukrainian power grid is working very poorly now, because it's half destructed. So and just that— the fact that there is a deficit of electric power, it also threatens the functionality of the station. Of course, it was kind of reduced to a certain extent when, on September 11th, the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power station called shut down, finally. But then, on the territorial bus, the Chernobyl nuclear power station, which is not a power station anymore, but it's a decommissioned station, basically, we could say, but it still has worked fuel, just like the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power station, it still has a lot of worked fuel. So hitting those containers can also produce catastrophic events, right, so can also turn a nuclear power station in a nuclear bomb. And the scope, you know, the scope, and even if we think about the cold war scenario, when a nuclear weapon was kind of conceived and used as a means of restraint, in this entire practice of deterrence. What's happening now is just the opposite. It works as a means of acceleration and the change of the speed, and through this creation of this new kind of phenomenon, nuclear cyber war is something that really needs theorisation. And maybe revision of many policies, ideas about so many things that I think that's what I plan to dedicate my future years of research.
Am Johal 53:46
Svitlana, is there anything you'd like to add?
Svitlana Matviyenko 53:52
All I can add, I want to think about solidarity more. And I want to think about kind of new channels, new ways, new means of solidarity that all of us should think about and ask ourselves. What are the problems with our all solidarities? So much kind of focus either on class, on this, on this, maybe we need more complex ways of seeing each other, understanding our differences and similarities. And looking at each other with fresh eyes. So I would like to open this call to look for solidarity, new ways for solidarity.
Am Johal 54:49
Svitlana, I just wanted to thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar. We, all of us here in Vancouver, send our love to you and we look forward to seeing you back here and being in conversation when you arrive back. And best wishes to you and your family in the meantime, and thank you for joining us on Below the Radar.
Svitlana Matviyenko 55:15
Thank you for inviting me.
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Alyha Bardi 55:22
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Svitlana Matviyenko. Head to the show notes to read up on some of the resources mentioned in this episode. Don’t forget to subscribe to Below the Radar on your podcast listening app of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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