Russia’s war against Ukraine is widely described as a war of attrition, fought not only on the battlefield, but across political, economic, social, and informational domains. In such a war, national survival depends on more than the strength of the armed forces. It also depends on whether society itself can withstand prolonged pressure, adapt under extreme conditions, and recover while the conflict is still ongoing. In Ukraine, civil society has become a decisive factor in this struggle. […]

As the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year, Ukrainian resistance has mostly been viewed through the prism of its military capabilities. Yet, Ukrainian resistance goes far beyond the battlefield fronts, and the Ukrainian diaspora has played an essential role in the resistance by countering narratives, channeling resources, and mobilizing non-Ukrainian actors to their cause through protests, lobbying, academia, culture, and social media. […]

Since 2022, Russia’s war of aggression has unleashed overlapping crises—attacks on civilians, destruction of infrastructure, mass displacement, and economic downturn. Many assume such emergencies demand strict central control. Ukraine’s experience shows the opposite: resilience has come from polycentric governance—state and non-state actors working together, drawing on local knowledge, pooling resources, and strengthening social cohesion. […]

The transformation of contemporary conflicts reflects the profound crisis of the international order. The intensification of hybrid warfare—characterized by the combined use of non-military tactics, technological tools, and multidimensional strategies operating in the so-called “grey zone”—challenges traditional security frameworks and constrains state responses. Instruments such as disinformation, cyber warfare, and economic coercion do not operate in isolation; they aim to destabilize from within, eroding social cohesion and paralyzing institutional responses. […]

In a world marked by renewed invasion, democratic backsliding, coups, and hybrid warfare, governments are pouring vast resources into military deterrence. Yet one of the most powerful–and underdeveloped–tools of national defense remains largely absent from security policy: civilian-based defense. This is surprising, in light of the increasingly recognized role the Ukrainian people have played in resisting invasion and other forms of Russian aggression. […]

Two decades before the US scholar Gene Sharp impulsed strategic nonviolent conflict into an academic discipline, American literary figure John Steinbeck penned a human-sized fable about dignity and the collective power which derives from people’s desire to remain free. From a reading of his book 84 years later we can distill many hard lessons for everyone: from the defense establishment to pacificists and humanitarian actors. […]

Long before civil resistance was formalized as a field of research and political strategy, Vercors’s Silence of the Sea and John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down offered a remarkable literary intuition.

Published in 1942, Silence of the Sea and The Moon is Down are situated within this historical moment when military occupation seemed permanent, armed victory unattainable, and the question of possible forms of civil resistance, without weapons, was acutely posed. […]

“Ukraine’s resistance in 2022 was not built in 2022. It was built through the painful lessons of 2014, through volunteer mobilization, and through years of institutional reform. Civil society worked by not only filling immediate capability gaps through mobilization and solidarity, but by building long-term institutional capacity through law, oversight, compliance, and governance reform. That is the quiet frontline. And it is one of the reasons Ukraine still stands. […]”

Despite our invisibility, I still believe that our European neighbors have as much to learn from Ukraine’s unarmed defenders as they do from our armed ones. In any case, we are inseparable due to our shared humanity. Many Ukrainian NGOs help our armed forces with supplies, donations, and support, because they need our help too. Civil-military relations are difficult for some outsiders to understand, particularly those driven by pacifist ideology. Simply put, war is awful, and everything about war is controversial–what is essential is doing your part and staying human. […]

“My generation thought that the Soviet Union collapsed bloodlessly and were really proud of it. So were the politicians in Europe and the U.S. In fact, the Soviet Union is only collapsing now, and this collapse is very bloody. And this blood already starts to spill into Europe. Thanks to Ukraine, it has not yet been flooded—but a war an Interrail trip away is a war at your doorstep. My role as a European, French, Slav, who bears the heritage of the perpetrator and the victim at the same time, is to reclaim what my Russian grandmother tried to erase from my family: the Ukrainian part of myself. […]”

Facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, I find it truly courageous that the Ukrainian art world is taking bold actions to preserve their country’s immense cultural heritage, both in-country and from afar. After all, as Olga aptly puts it, “This war is a war of cultures”. Putin’s only language is violence; Ukrainians have been fluent in the language of nonviolent resistance for decades. By putting culture in a key position of the anti-occupation struggle, Ukrainians can and are nudging the conflict to where they can have a battlefield advantage.. […]

I met Olga Sagaidak last May at the Ukrainian Cultural Center here in Paris, France. In the large drawing room where I conducted our interview, the walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with jaw-dropping photography of war destruction and street art protesting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. My stomach knotted when, leaning forward for a closer glimpse of one anti-war drawing, I realized it had in fact been sketched by the hand of a Ukrainian child. […]