The readings this week focus on Ukrainian migrants and refugees settling in Berlin and Germany more broadly. Each piece demonstrates a different aspect of the challenges confronting Ukrainians, from the trend of domestic German hostility to migrants over recent years to attacks on Ukrainians on the battlefield as well as Ukrainians who have fled and face the possibility of never seeing their home and people. What struck me across the readings was how the war has become embedded in nearly every dimension of Ukrainian life—even for those who have physically left Ukraine. This was particularly evident in the discussion of children’s books about the war. The books provide a way for families and communities to teach about and ‘cope’ with the realities of conflict. Moreover, storytelling becomes a form of historical record, an attempt to ensure that the experiences of Ukrainians are not lost as the conflict continues.
I had a similar reaction to the Guardian article, “‘A living, moving exhibition’: Ukraine Museum opens in Berlin air-raid bunker.” My immediate thought was that the museum should remain in Berlin even after the conflict ends. Beyond documenting the war itself, it could become part of broader memory studies about displacement, civilian experience, and the ways Ukrainians have become embedded in German society as a consequence of the conflict. When read with a report also by the Guardian on rising attacks against refugees amid increasing far-right crime, this raises a more difficult question about the long-term relationship between migration and political cohesion. Germany’s reception of Ukrainians cannot be understood only as a short-term humanitarian response if the war continues indefinitely. The longer the conflict lasts, the more displaced Ukrainians may become part of Germany’s social fabric and the more complicated the politics of their presence become.
The readings on drone warfare raised a different but related question about responsibility in war. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into military technology, it becomes harder to separate human decisions from the systems used to carry them out. I wonder if an AI-enabled drone mistakenly strikes a civilian hospital or school, who is responsible for the resulting casualties—the state that deployed it, the military personnel who authorized its use, or the company that developed the technology? At what point does reliance on increasingly autonomous systems create a moral hazard? Are we having these challenging discussions? The technological complexity of modern warfare creates an ethical problem that extends beyond the battlefield. When political leaders delegate increasingly consequential decisions to machines, accountability cannot be delegated as well.
The readings also emphasized how thoroughly war disrupts ordinary civilian life. Ukrainian volunteers, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and migrants are all drawn into the conflict in different ways—war is not confined to soldiers or traditional battlefields. The protests and demonstrations organized by Ukrainian migrants, including those depicted by Vitsche, similarly show how displacement does not necessarily mean disengagement. One line from the clip particularly stood out to me: ‘war fatigue might be real, but we can’t afford that if lives are still being lost.’ After years of conflict, fatigue may be increasingly understandable, but the human consequences of the war have not diminished because it has lasted longer. For Ukrainians both inside and outside the country, resistance therefore remains not only a political act but also a way of refusing to allow continued violence to become normalized.
