How War Is Rebordering Ukraine

After gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine faced very different challenges at its eastern and western state borders. In the west, the former external Soviet border, which had been strictly controlled and hardly permeable, became the gate to Europe for millions of Ukrainians. The infrastructure had to be modernized to overcome decades of international isolation and to facilitate the newly gained freedom of movement. Ukraine’s western neighbors—Poland, (Czecho)Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania—were heading toward and eventually joined the EU and NATO. In many respects, they served as Ukraine’s role models for the postcommunist transition (particularly Poland).

This is not to say neighborly relations were cloudless. Kyiv’s relations with Warsaw were strained by a difficult past; it had differences with Budapest over the issue of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia; and it was embroiled in a dispute with Bucharest over their maritime boundary. Nonetheless, in Ukraine the western neighborhood was associated with security and economic stability, a strong incentive for Ukrainian labor migrants.

But the liberalization of the border regime was not a linear process. Ukraine’s western neighbors joined the Schengen Agreement, which abolished internal border controls and introduced a common visa policy within the EU. In Ukraine, left outside the Schengen area, the new border regime was perceived as an institutionalized policy of exclusion. Its consequences, especially painful for the western border regions, were softened by various solutions on the ground. These included bilateral agreements on local border traffic; the so-called Polish Card, which grants its holders access to the Polish labor market, education, and social welfare; and a semi-legal practice of obtaining Hungarian or Romanian passports. (Ukraine does not permit dual citizenship.)

Labor migrants and cross-border shuttle traders were not the only Ukrainians who saw the border and its geographic proximity as an opportunity. Through cross-border cooperation, cultural projects, and exchange programs, local communities in the border regions benefited from the EU neighborhood. The liberalization of the border regime with the EU became a political priority. Ukrainian society’s growing pro-European aspirations clashed with the pro-Russian policy of President Viktor Yanukovych’s government, resulting in the 2013–14 Euromaidan protests and Yanukovych’s ouster.

Since 2017, a visa-free agreement has allowed Ukrainians to travel to the EU for tourism, private visits, or business purposes without applying for a Schengen visa. Although this arrangement officially does not include a work permit, holders of the Ukrainian biometric passport can stay in the EU for up to 90 days in any 180-day period, which in practice makes short-term employment contracts possible. This has created more competition in the labor markets of neighboring countries, opening them to Ukrainians from the east and south as well. In March 2021, a year before the Russian invasion, 18 million Ukrainians held biometric passports and thus were eligible to enter the EU without a visa.

The challenges at Ukraine’s borders in the east were of a different kind. “East” is understood here in geopolitical rather than geographic terms; besides Russia, it includes two other former Soviet republics, namely Belarus (in the north) and Moldova (in the southwest). Before 1991, Ukraine’s borders with these countries were merely administrative lines, existing only on the map; they hardly mattered for everyday life. Their delimitation and demarcation had to be negotiated after the Soviet collapse, and the border infrastructure needed to be built from scratch.

Local populations on both sides of the border shared Soviet-era socialization, the Russian language, and a common information space. They often perceived the newly established border as a restriction on their freedom of movement. Against the background of the postcommunist transition’s economic hardships, collective memories of the Soviet era could easily be instrumentalized by nostalgic postcommunist and pro-Russian political forces. Back in 2002, when I interviewed residents of the Kharkiv region bordering Russia, they tended to attribute the market transformations of the 1990s and their consequences—the emergence of private agricultural companies, rising unemployment, and social insecurity—to the new Ukrainian state. These changes seemed inseparable from the reality of the new border cutting them off from the imagined Soviet past.

Unlike ordinary citizens, most Ukrainian political experts and policymakers saw the new post-Soviet borders through a security lens. Part of Ukraine’s border with Moldova is de facto a border with the self-proclaimed and Russia-leaning republic of Transdniestria. Especially in the past few years, security concerns have been raised over the ongoing political crisis in Belarus and the instrumentalization of refugees by Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s dictatorship.

But the major security challenge has been Russia. For pro-Western political elites in Kyiv, the Russian border represented economic dependence, vulnerability to Moscow’s political and informational influence, and weak Ukrainian identity in the east. For the Kremlin, especially after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, the border with Ukraine was associated with the danger of further EU and NATO enlargement, a threat to Russia’s dominance in the post-Soviet space.

Despite ups and downs in bilateral relations, the 2,000-kilometer border, running mainly through urbanized and densely populated areas, remained easily permeable for citizens of both countries. Ukrainians and Russians were able to cross the border with internal IDs. Crimea was popular among Russian tourists, and Russia remained the top destination for Ukrainian labor migrants.

Things changed in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and supported pro-Russian mobilization in Ukraine’s east and south. Russia’s hybrid aggression, which soon turned into a covert military intervention, has changed Ukrainian attitudes about the eastern border.

According to an opinion poll carried out in summer 2014, 58 percent of respondents wanted Ukraine to close the border with Russia; 34 percent opposed such a measure. Forty-nine percent supported the idea of introducing a visa regime with Russia; 41 percent were against it. (Such restrictive measures found less support in the east and south.)

The conflict reshaped the post-Soviet geography of the Ukrainian-Russian borderlands. Cross-border cooperation projects were put on ice; the bilateral agreement on local border traffic was terminated. Direct flights between the two countries ended in 2015, and Russia built a new railway from Moscow to Rostov, bypassing Ukrainian territory. For Russian tourists, the popular transit route to Crimea through Ukraine was replaced by direct flights; in 2018, the new Kerch Bridge connected Crimea with the Krasnodar region of Russia.

But the growing alienation between the two countries was not the conflict’s most notable outcome. As a result of Russian aggression, Ukraine’s eastern borderlands turned into a patchwork of unrecognized self-proclaimed “republics,” annexed territories under international sanctions, and grey zones along cease-fire lines. In annexed Crimea, due to Moscow’s policy of automatic naturalization, most local residents became Russian citizens; those who rejected Russian citizenship faced numerous disadvantages. But many Crimean residents did not hurry to renounce their Ukrainian citizenship, which allowed for more freedom of movement internationally. They crossed the new de facto border to apply for Ukrainian biometric passports.

From Kyiv’s perspective, Crimean residents remained Ukrainian citizens and Crimea was a “temporarily occupied territory.” Entering Crimea from Russia without permission from the Ukrainian authorities was criminalized under Ukrainian law. Russian authorities, meanwhile, were repressing Crimean Tatars and pro-Ukrainian activists who protested the annexation, buying the loyalty of other inhabitants, and inundating the territory with aggressive propaganda.

Although direct railway and bus connections between continental Ukraine and occupied Crimea were cut off, Ukrainian citizens from the mainland and Crimean residents could still visit each other. During 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic, 2,582,000 persons crossed the de facto border at three officially established crossing points in both directions, according to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine.

At the “contact line” separating the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” from the government-controlled territories of Ukraine, the situation in 2014–22 was far less predictable. Unlike Crimea, Donbas endured a military conflict that caused mass forced displacement. Half of the Donbas population—more than 2 million people—were forced to leave their homes. In addition to 1.5 million internally displaced in Ukraine, over 1 million went to Russia, according to Russian sources. Residential areas and the region’s infrastructure were severely damaged; more than 14,000 people, both military personnel and civilians, lost their lives.

Although the front line stabilized with a cease-fire in 2015, the security situation on the ground remained precarious. Local residents living in the grey zone along the cease-fire line found themselves in a permanent state of exception, surrounded by minefields and suffering from shelling, with very limited contact with civic administration and access to public services. The cease-fire line cut off the regional capitals Donetsk and Luhansk from the larger parts of both regions that remained under Kyiv’s control. The conflict and its economic consequences left many families in the Donbas region divided, as young people left for Ukraine (or Russia) for work and study while the elderly stayed home.

For these reasons, intense movement continued across the contact line, where five control points were established on the Ukrainian side. Total crossings in both directions during 2019 reached 13,933,000, Ukrainian statistics show, more than five times the number at the administrative line with Crimea during the same period. According to UNHCR data, 63 percent of those crossing the contact line were at least 60 years old. Long lines and the absence of basic infrastructure made crossing a challenging experience.

Russia took different political approaches in Donbas and Crimea. After annexing Crimea, it established a permanent border. But until February 2022, Moscow neither claimed Donbas nor officially recognized the sovereignty of the “republics.” Instead, it sought to reintegrate them into Ukraine as an autonomous pro-Russian region. Moscow encouraged locals to apply for Russian citizenship, and the “republics” issued their own passports. But the majority of the people in the territories outside Kyiv’s control kept their Ukrainian citizenship and remained dependent on social assistance that they could receive only in government-controlled territory.

Volodymyr Zelensky, elected Ukrainian president in 2019, initially sought a quick resolution of the Donbas conflict and tried to win the sympathies of the local population in the occupied territories. The government started to modernize the crossing points in Crimea and Donbas. But these plans were upended first by the pandemic, and then by the full-scale Russian invasion.

On February 21, 2022, Vladimir Putin officially recognized the state sovereignty of the Donetsk and Luhansk “republics” and promised them military assistance. Three days later, Russia invaded Ukraine, making the de facto borders in Crimea and Donbas obsolete. During the first weeks of the invasion, Russia occupied vast territories in the east, south, and north of Ukraine. By April, however, the Russian army was forced to withdraw from the north (the Chernihiv, Kyiv, Sumy, and Zhytomyr regions); Ukraine regained control over the Kharkiv region in September and the city of Kherson in November.

Still, as of this writing, around one-fifth of Ukrainian territory remains under Russian occupation. In Donbas, the Russian army has been slowly but steadily capturing one Ukrainian town after another, leveling them to the ground in the process.

This Russian occupation 2.0 differs from the annexation of Crimea, where Moscow avoided the use of military force and pretended not to be involved in the “sovereign decisions” of the local Crimean parliament. It also differs from the 2014–22 hybrid occupation in Donbas, implemented through local proxies—the separatist “republics.” Since February 2022, Russia has not hidden its neo-imperial politics of territorial expansion and its aim of destroying the Ukrainian state.

Ukraine, for its part, has demonstrated much greater internal cohesion and resilience of state institutions than it did in 2014. In the absence of a pro-Russian mobilization from below, the Russian aggression cannot be disguised as an “internal Ukrainian conflict.” During the first weeks and months of the occupation, Ukrainians engaged in various forms of mass resistance to imposed Russian rule: creating local solidarity networks and participating in volunteer self-help activities, organizing rallies against the Russian occupation, displaying Ukrainian symbols in public and removing Russian ones, boycotting the orders of occupational authorities, or even committing acts of sabotage.

Eventually, however, public protests became impossible as Russia used its repressive machine to suppress any dissent. Municipal leaders, journalists, pro-Ukrainian activists, veterans of the war in Donbas, and members of their families have been kidnapped and arrested, often tortured and killed. Many who stayed loyal to Ukraine were forced to flee or sometimes were expelled by the occupational authorities. Those fleeing to Kyiv-controlled territory risked their lives crossing the front line in the absence of established humanitarian corridors or made complicated detours through Russia, the Baltic states, and Poland. They were subjected to rigorous controls at Russian military checkpoints and often detained in Russia’s so-called filtration camps.

Apart from repression, Russia has used various instruments to consolidate its control over the occupied territories: information isolation (cutting off the local population from the Ukrainian Internet and mobile phone providers) and massive propaganda; instrumentalization of humanitarian aid and social benefits; introduction of Russian currency; memory politics pursued through the dissemination of imperial Russian and Soviet historical narratives and symbols; and a transition to the Russian language and Russian curricula in education.

Occupational authorities often forced Ukrainian families to consent to the “evacuation” of their children to Russia, where they were subjected to ideological indoctrination. Thousands of Ukrainian children whose parents were killed, arrested, or lost in the whirlwind of war have been forcibly relocated to Russia; in many cases, they were given for adoption to Russian families after evidence of their nationality was destroyed.

In September 2022, Russia held hastily staged “referendums” on the territories of the four Ukrainian regions it partially occupied (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson) and announced their annexation. Moscow tried to secure the illusion of legitimacy by conducting local (September 2023) and presidential (March 2024) elections in the occupied territories.

One important aspect of the political integration of these territories has been forced passportization. Access to social benefits and health care, property transactions, business registration, and public administration jobs became dependent on Russian citizenship. Since July 2024, Ukrainians in the annexed regions who do not possess Russian passports are officially considered “foreigners” and risk being deported.

The recovery from Russian occupation and devastation has been a huge challenge for Ukraine’s east and south, and will remain so in the coming years. De-occupation proved to be no easy task, even after just half a year of Russian rule. In the Kharkiv region and in Kherson, de-occupied in fall 2022, Ukraine demonstrated remarkable state capacities by restoring communication, basic transport connections, and key infrastructure. But continuous shelling, energy blackouts, and the ruined economy have stalled recovery, preventing refugees from returning home.

The task of demining farmland is daunting; the ecological damage, especially after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in June 2023, is enormous. Countering the depopulation in small towns and villages is even more difficult. Those who stay are often elderly, less mobile, and poor. The return of young people and families with children depends on the availability of jobs—which were scarce in the Ukrainian provinces even before the Russian invasion. But the lack of security is the major impediment to the recovery of the de-occupied and frontline territories as long as the war is raging.

It is difficult to overestimate the medium-term challenges Ukraine faces in the de-occupied territories. They include reconstructing ruined infrastructure and housing; encouraging businesses to invest and create jobs; returning the deported Ukrainian citizens from Russia and re-integrating them; providing social services for the most vulnerable groups and fighting poverty; undoing Russian educational and cultural policies; and restoring the institutions of local democracy.

Huge tasks also await Ukraine in transitional justice: documenting and investigating the crimes committed against Ukrainian citizens during the occupation, dealing with collaborators and traitors, providing compensation to the victims. As the first experiences with de-occupation have shown, imposed Russian rule ruins basic trust and solidarity at the local level. It leaves local communities divided by allegations of collaboration and requires coping with collective traumas and working on reconciliation.

How Ukraine deals with the issue of collaboration will be central to the reintegration of formerly occupied territories. In the first days of the invasion, the Ukrainian parliament criminalized collaboration, which it defined as denying the fact of Russian aggression, taking jobs in the occupational power structure, handing over material resources to the occupiers, and introducing Russian “educational standards,” among other actions. In the first year of the Russian invasion, this was a warning to those who found themselves under Russian rule to maintain their loyalty to Ukraine.

Yet the longer people live under occupation, the more difficult it is to avoid involvement with the Russian state—particularly for those active in private business, education, or municipal government. As of May 2024, more than 3,500 sentences had been handed down for collaboration, justifying Russian aggression, treason, and related offenses. (About one-fifth of the convictions were in absentia, since the accused were in Russia or the occupied territories.)

Meanwhile, the rather broad definition of collaboration in the criminal code, the lack of differentiation between forced and “deliberate” collaboration, and the disproportionate punishment of minor offenses (such as pro-Russian posts on social media) have been widely criticized by the Ukrainian media, lawyers, and human rights experts. The government proposed amending the law so that working in health care, critical infrastructure, public utilities, retail, catering, and agriculture would not be considered collaboration, but no changes have been made so far.

The challenges of reintegration will be a serious test for both state and society if Ukraine de-occupies Crimea and the parts of Donbas that have been under Russian control since 2014. Their populations have been exposed to massive anti-Ukrainian propaganda, people with pro-Ukrainian views have largely left, and young people have been socialized in a Russian school system. To prepare for democratic elections, a transitional period of several years will be needed to reestablish public administration, reactivate Ukrainian political parties and nongovernmental organizations, secure the voting rights of displaced persons, and address the consequences of forced Russian passportization. It will also be necessary to review the court decisions of the occupational authorities and to restore property rights. Amnesty and lustration procedures (the latter aimed at excluding from public office those who collaborated with occupation authorities) can serve as alternatives to criminal punishment.

At the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022, Kyiv introduced a visa regime for Russian citizens and officially closed all crossing points at the borders with Russia and Belarus, as well as at the Transdniestria section of the border with Moldova. The EU border, by contrast, has been vital for Ukraine’s survival.

The border with Poland has played a key role in channeling military support from Western partners as well as enabling the delivery of humanitarian aid and offering an alternative route for Ukrainian agricultural exports during the Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. The Romanian Black Sea port Constanţa has become a transit hub for Ukrainian grain, and Chop, at the border with Hungary and Slovakia, is a strategic railway junction. Since Ukraine closed its entire airspace to all civil traffic, Ukrainians have been flying from foreign airports close to the border in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, and Romania.

The heightened importance of the western border as the gateway to Europe forced the Ukrainian government to accelerate the modernization of border infrastructure (roads, railways, and crossing points), which had already been underway before 2022. As Kyiv entered accession negotiations with the EU in the summer of 2024, enhancing the western border infrastructure was not only a side effect of the war with Russia, but also part of a long-term strategy.

Ukraine’s relations with its western neighbors are not without problems. These countries differ in their attitudes toward the Russian aggression and military help for Ukraine. (Hungary is a notable outlier in this respect.) Some sectors of the Ukrainian economy, even if ravaged by the war, present a challenge to their business interests. Even in Poland, one of Ukraine’s most reliable partners, protests by truckers and farmers fearing competition from their Ukrainian counterparts have paralyzed cross-border traffic for months. But overall, the EU and NATO’s eastern enlargement has helped secure Ukraine’s western border. Russian fantasies about partitioning Ukraine, with Poland and Hungary claiming parts of its territory, have not materialized.

In war-torn Ukraine, the western border regions are associated with security and stability not only geopolitically, but also on the everyday level. Unlike their compatriots in the east, residents have time to run to a bomb shelter when an alarm sounds. Schools and universities can work offline, whereas children in the frontline regions have seen their teachers and schoolmates only onscreen for more than four years now (including the two years of the pandemic). Proximity to the western border also provides more flexibility and opportunities for family reunions. This makes the western borderlands of Ukraine, and the Lviv region in particular, an attractive destination for internally displaced persons—even if most who are displaced from the frontline regions prefer to stay closer to home.

Institutions (corporations, universities, health care facilities) have also relocated from the frontline and occupied territories to the western regions, which benefit from inflows of qualified specialists and foreign investment. Due to its developed infrastructure and the commitment of the local authorities, the Lviv region tops the list of receiving regions, along with Odesa. Border logistics and proximity to the European markets draw businesses westward.

Yet the gate to Europe is not open for everyone. Martial law banning Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country was a game changer for the local population, whose economic strategies depend on crossing the EU border. Women often take on tasks previously performed by men, and the border has become a highly gendered space.

In general, women now cross the border much more often than men—for work, shopping, shuttle trade, and family visits. Only some categories of men—the disabled, retirees, or parents of more than two children—can cross the border without restrictions. For others, such as volunteers carrying humanitarian aid or military supplies, students studying abroad, or truck drivers, exceptions may be made, based on uncertain and changing rules.

The restrictions have created a kind of grey zone that encourages corruption. As the war becomes a protracted conflict, the Ukrainian military faces a critical lack of manpower. The border with the EU has become the main escape route for men avoiding military service. Since February 2022, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have identified around 480 criminal groups smuggling people out of the country. A new military mobilization law that took effect in May 2024 has further tightened the rules for crossing the border. Even if their necessity is largely understood, these measures are unpopular because they severely limit freedom of movement—one of the major gains of Ukraine’s independence.

The war with Russia has dramatically aggravated the security challenges in Ukraine’s eastern borderlands and multiplied the challenges of Europeanization at its western border. For years or even decades to come, Ukraine’s west will be the country’s rear base and a stronghold of EU integration. The east is bracing itself for a long period of hostility and, in the best case, isolation from Russia.

Lviv is now full of young people, and its residential areas are expanding. In Kharkiv, 40 km from the Russian border, children attend classes in a metro station; the city is building more schools underground. In Lviv, the Russian spoken by eastern Ukrainian newcomers is often perceived as “the language of the aggressor,” whereas Kharkivites surviving under shelling are united by pride in their resilience and by local patriotism. The war is experienced differently in Ukraine’s regions, and these dramatic differences are especially pronounced in the borderlands, resonating with old divisions.

But the war has been a huge melting pot, too. Millions of Ukrainians have had to leave home or have hosted displaced persons; encountering fellow citizens from other regions, they have experienced cultural, religious, and linguistic differences firsthand. Facing a common existential threat forges national unity. If the printed press, according to political scientist Benedict Anderson, created the “imagined communities” of modern nations, Ukrainians become such a community every sleepless night as they follow Russian missile strikes on social media.

Sociological surveys show that differences between east and west in attitudes to the Soviet past, perceptions of Russia as a threat, and visions of Ukraine’s future in the EU and NATO are diminishing. Even if this can be partly explained by the fact that Russia has occupied territories with a bigger share of pro-Russian and Soviet-nostalgic inhabitants, the shift in public opinion is obvious. The perceived cultural distance between residents of different regions is also shrinking.

It is difficult to predict whether Ukraine will still be divided into east and west when it emerges from this horrible war. Much will depend on how the war ends, whether Ukraine regains its territories in the east and south and reintegrates them, which parties and politicians hold the advantage in Ukrainian politics when elections resume, and if they instrumentalize regional differences. With generational change, some old cleavages will become less relevant. But the Ukrainian state and civil society will have to work hard to prevent the recent collective traumas from giving rise to new group stereotypes and regional hierarchies.