Kateryna Haertel: Majority-minority relations in Ukraine: State minority politics in a changed security context

The lecture will look into the impact of two military interventions by Russia into Ukraine’s territory – in 2014 and 2022 – onto the majority-minority relations and identity issues in Ukraine. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the occupation of some parts of the Donbas in 2014, one observes a clear tendency on the national level of treating minority-related topics through a security lens. Since February 2022, a minority-related discourse and policies have been viewed as an existential threat to the very existence of the state of Ukraine. The lecture will map and interpret, often as part of the wider political picture, the key milestones that characterize the majority-minority relations emerging in a post-2014 period and their impact on the dynamics related to minorities’ identities. 

Kateryna Haertel is a political and policy analyst with expertise in national minority issues, diversity governance and multilingualism.  Her prior engagements were in the fields of preventive diplomacy, international civil society cooperation and academia.  She currently serves as a political officer with the Federal Union of European Nationalities in Brussels. She has published on minority politics in Ukraine in the post 2014-period. Haertel holds master degrees in political science and European studies from the National University ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’, Friedrich Schiller University Jena and College of Europe.