Description
The Russo-Ukrainian war has garnered extensive attention from scholars and policy-makers, sparking debates on great power hierarchies and post-Soviet colonial relations. However, childhood as a site of knowledge construction and reproduction of geopolitical dynamics remains largely unexplored in this discourse. Yet, the conflict manifests itself in many domains of childhood, such as militarisation of Russian schools, deportation of Ukrainian children, or the Western media portraying Putin himself as a child. This paper seeks to place childhood as the primary analytical lens to understand the Russo-Ukrainian war. To do so, I will present preliminary findings and analysis of how Russian state-approved media militarises and mobilises images of childhood to legitimise and articulate Russia's invasion in Ukraine. I connect these findings with the wider context of post-Soviet hierarchical relations and Russia's desire to establish itself as a great power while also systematically portraying Ukraine as backwards and in need of imperial guidance. Merging my findings with the critical childhood studies literature, I argue that childhood is a valuable site of knowledge that can provide important insights into war and conflict dynamics in post-Soviet spaces and beyond.
