Disrupted Lands and Discursive Shifts: Land in Ukrainian Media After russia’s Full-Scale Invasion

Summary

The media play a central role in conveying the damage caused by war to land and ecosystems, offering insights that can be non-obvious and grounded in technology and scientific expertise to broader audiences, who may have no direct experience of war-induced land damage. We conducted a discourse analysis of Ukrainian media coverage on the destruction and recovery of land since russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. We found that, while much war-related academic debate focuses on strategic aspects of territory, questions of land are actively debated. Land matters as the ground that humans and non-humans live on and from, but which is also turned into a space of lurking dangers; as a medium that transmits war-induced harms and risks into the future, but also holds potential for recovery; and as deeply intertwined with collective identity and national history, while also being described as a non-human war victim in its own right. This confirms calls to take land more seriously in international politics and other fields dealing with armed conflict, and draws attention to the variety of ways in which land matters and is being represented.