“Without them, the defense of the country and society would have incurred enormous losses”, sociologist Olha Bezrukova tells Faustine Vincent in Le Monde, in an article concerning the massive mobilisation of Ukrainian civil society in resistance to the invasion and support of the population.
What the article calls “voluntarism” has become a mass phenomenon in Ukraine: a survey conducted in August 2024 by the Ilko Kucheriv Foundation finds that “The absolute majority of Ukrainians (71%) since the beginning of the full-scale invasion contributed to volunteer help for the army, temporarily displaced persons or people, who suffered because of war. […] 17% didn’t help and have no plans to do it.”
Such forms of activism were already witnessed in 2014 (with the outbreak of war in the Donbass), but after 2022 they have grown exponentially: “It has become a powerful and systematic force”, Bezrukova adds. “Ukrainians have learned to rapidly mobilise resources and act strategically, without waiting for orders from on high”.
In an article for The Ukrainians, sociologist and rector of the Kyiv School of Economics Tymofii Brik writes of the “tremendous and dramatic” impact that the war has had on society. However, as Brik emphasises, there’s a surprising paradox: “We know that Ukrainian society has a long history of a lack of social trust and civic participation; we also know of the complex challenges and trauma Ukrainians have been through. But at the same time, other polls show phenomenal proactiveness of Ukrainians. […] On the one hand, we hear and read that Ukrainians are socially disoriented people without trust, existing in splintered communities unable to unite. On the other hand, the latest data shows a radically different picture: conscious citizens who trust institutions and work together to achieve victory. Is it a temporary illusion that will soon fade away? Or is it a new Ukraine? Or maybe Ukraine has always been like this—we just haven’t seen it because we’ve been looking in the wrong place?”
Kryvyi Rih, 2014 to 2022
Daria Saburova holds a doctorate from Paris Nanterre University and works on labour-related issues. In June 2024 Saburova published Travailleuses de la résistance, Les classes populaires ukrainiennes face à la guerre (”Women workers of the resistance: the Ukrainian working classes in the face of war”, Editions du Croquant). This work is focused on the experiences of the population and sheds light on the role of gender and social class in the work of resistance performed by volunteers.
Saburova’s research was performed in Kryvyi Rih, a city in the east of Ukraine. Kryvyi Rih is an interesting case, for a number of reasons: it is primarily known for being a major industrial centre, for steel production especially, in a region dominated by mining interests; it is also famous for its role in Nestor Makhno’s anarchist insurrection during the Russian Civil War (1917-1922); more recently, it has suffered intense Russian bombardment; and finally, it is the birth place of Volodymyr Zelensky.
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In Kryvyi Rih, before the war, the vast majority mostly spoke Russian, the language in which Zelensky himself built his acting career (and the language of the – now dystopian – television series, Servant of The People, in which he starred as the president of Ukraine).
In an interview with the independent French outlet Politis (also published in English by the Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal), Saburova relates how the outlook of people she interviewed between 2014 and 2024 changed over time: “In 2013-14, in Maidan Square, and then in the war in Donbas, it was mainly the middle classes who mobilised as volunteers and voluntary fighters. They formed the core of this mobilisation on both the organisational and ideological levels. For them, it was a fight for an independent Ukrainian state, as well as for a European and democratic path opposed to Russian authoritarianism. The overthrow of the increasingly authoritarian pro-Russian regime was justified in their eyes. Many of my interlocutors from Kryvyi Rih saw these events, on the contrary, as an attack on democracy by protesters and opposition parties. The war in Donbas was not their war, even though some of their colleagues in the mines and factories were already being mobilised into the Ukrainian army at that time. But on February 24, 2022, people rose up because their city, that is, their survival, their material existence and that of their community, was immediately threatened by a military invasion. It was less about a commitment to abstract values than a defence of their daily lives.”
The majority of voters in Kryvyi Rih supported Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president who was dismissed from parliament in 2014 following Euromaidan. In an interview with France Culture, Saburova explains that most of the businesses in the area belonged to the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov (who sponsored Yanukovych’s Party of Regions), and their workers “had certain benefits linked to their trade” which were partly lost after Maidan due to a series of “neoliberal reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund as repayment for a loan”.
Between these two periods, however, there is one thing in common: voluntarism.
“The war in the Donbass”, Saburova explains, “had already resulted in more than a million internally displaced people, cared for mainly by volunteers (evacuation, accommodation, administrative support, legal support, etc.), because the aid provided by the state was largely insufficient. In 2022, the influx of humanitarian aid was greater, but the structural problems remained, and volunteers became essential for the distribution of this aid. In my book, I explain that this situation is not just the result of an unpredictable crisis, but is also largely organised by the state (through neoliberal reforms of public services, which have accelerated since 2014) and international organisations (which prefer to cooperate with private NGOs). The work that could be done by public service workers is taken on for free by volunteers. The recent USAID shutdown illustrates the ravages of the ‘NGO-isation’ of such services: overnight, Trump’s decision deprived hundreds of programmes around the world, including in Ukraine, of funding.”
Saburova speaks of “war weariness” in the personal accounts of the people she talks to, especially because “the working classes are materially hurt by both the war and the neoliberal policies of the government”.
How exactly? “For example, in some mines, wages have fallen by 70 percent since 2022. The management justifies these cuts by citing rising production costs and difficulties in finding market outlets due to the war. They are helped in this by martial law: the miners are not allowed to strike, and agree to work under any conditions in order to be exempt from military service, since the mines have the status of strategic enterprise.”
Recommended reading
Natalia Lomonosova | Social Workers in Times of War | Commons | 11 March 2025 | EN, UA
On women workers in the Ukrainian context, I also want to highlight an article about the research of sociologist Natalia Lomonosova:
“[…] Everyone was anxious, the old ladies didn’t know what was happening or when. […] So you could say that visiting carers were on the phone with them 24 hours a day, because they could call at night or anytime, needing answers to their questions. ‘Halia, there’s an air raid alarm right now. Halia, is there anything falling, is there anything banging?’”.
This is an account given by a social worker following the first bombardments.
“The full-scale war has negatively affected both the population’s access to social services and the working conditions of those providing them”, writes Lomonosova. “In frontline communities, as well as in those that have received significant numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs), the capacity to deliver support has been severely limited.” The stories of these workers and their conditions provide essential insight into a society in wartime. Not only do they have to reckon with the direct consequences (bombardments, destruction), they also face indirect consequences such as gender-based violence (which has increased) and psychological trauma. In 2021, the author explains, “the average monthly salary in the field of social assistance (including salaries of workers at territorial centers, social service provision centers, and social service centers) before taxation was UAH 10,095 (€327). By comparison, […] the average nominal salary across Ukraine in December 2021 was UAH 17,453 (€567)”.
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