Featuring a special section on "Identity Clashes: Russian and Ukrainian Debates on Culture, History, and Politics" This issue's special section explores the discursive gaps, tensions, and ruptures between Ukrainian and Russian narratives of national identity. It gives the floor to Russian and Ukrainian authors with a view to enabling analytical comparisons between the dominant narratives in the two countries, including their cultural, historical, and political dimensions. This juxtaposition of Russian and Ukrainian insights is aimed at deepening our understanding of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Andrey Makarychev is Guest Professor at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Science, University of Tartu. His areas of expertise include EU-Russia studies, the EU-Russia common neighborhood, and regionalism in the post-Soviet space. Nina Rozhanovskaya is Coordinator and academic liaison in Russia at the Kennan Institute, Wilson Center. She has published on the topics of nuclear nonproliferation and the US-Russian disarmament dialogue.