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Ukraine Fatigue: how the Ukrainian Student Union rallies global support in times of war
By Sofiia Taran, on 12 March 2024
Last month commemorated the two-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an event that, for many, represents a decade-long conflict beginning with the 2014 annexation of Crimea. This war has had devastating impacts on both the military and civilians, leading to widespread destruction, loss of life, and humanitarian crises. This raises fears of a wider conflict in Europe, challenging the post-World War II international order and its legal and security architectures.
Despite substantial support from Ukraine’s international allies, the phenomenon of war fatigue, also known as “Ukraine Fatigue,” emerges as a new challenge after two years of the full-scale conflict. This challenge also affects Ukrainians abroad, who find themselves in a struggle to maintain international awareness and support for their country.
The Ukrainian Student Union (USU) is an organisation that brings together Ukrainian student societies in Universities around the UK. After joining USU in September 2023 as a Partnership Manager, my role was to foster and grow the relationship of Ukrainian youth with international stakeholders and ensure sustained engagement and support from the international arena and work closely with the Uk Parliament for various events.
To bring back the international community’s engagement with the ongoing crisis, our team and I, created a social media initiative for the second anniversary of the war on 24.02.2024 aimed at highlighting the persistent nature of the conflict. This campaign, featuring a flash mob that included 25 Ukrainian societies across the United Kingdom, including the UCL Ukrainian Society, centered an exhibition showcasing Google portraits of Ukrainians alongside the important message, “The war is still ongoing.” This endeavour holds profound significance, as it underscores the terrifying reality of daily casualties on Ukrainian battlefields and civilian population, to remind the global support about the cause.
It is important to acknowledge the repeated struggle for independence that Ukraine has faced in the past, a narrative further explored through a video produced by the SMM team and me. The essence of this campaign is to serve as an explanation and a reminder to the international audience that the resilience of the Ukrainian people has not been happening for 2 or 10 years, but instead it stretches far into past generations.
This campaign stands as a testament to the global community against developing “war fatigue” because of the Ukrainian people that are living in constant battle against Russia. This work underlined the critical need for continuous international support and solidarity with Ukraine amidst its ongoing fight for sovereignty and peace, as…
…the war is still going on…
Sofiia Taran is Partnership Manager at the Ukrainian Students Union and an IRDR BSc student in Global Humanitarian Studies.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author.
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