NPR’s Scott Detrow talks with David Lewis, a professor of international relations at the University of Exeter, about the “administrative occupation” transforming Ukrainian society.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
In occupied Ukraine, there is a quiet transformation taking place. Russia now controls some 18% of Ukrainian territory. And behind the trenches and the mines and the mortars of the ongoing war’s battlefront, the Kremlin is working hard on many different fronts to incorporate these areas into Russian politics and culture. And with aid from the United States and Western Europe in doubt, some people are worried that these parts of the country could slip away for good. David Lewis is one of them. He’s been keeping close tabs on what’s happening in occupied Ukraine and recently wrote about it in Foreign Affairs. Lewis is a professor at the University of Exeter, where he teaches about post-Soviet politics. Welcome to the show.
DAVID LEWIS: Great to be with you.
DETROW: You know, we know a lot about the violence and the human rights abuses that are taking place along the front lines of this war, but you say that there is an administrative occupation taking place in the parts that have been annexed by Russia. What do you mean by that?
LEWIS: Yes. Alongside all the military, the soldiers, the tanks that you see as the images of occupation, there’s also a whole army of bureaucrats that are taking on this task of really trying to incorporate all these lands into the Russian state. And that means transforming their laws, introducing new tax systems, the very sort of everyday bureaucracy of life, including weddings, death certificates, car registrations, health insurance, pension payments. All the stuff that the state provides is now being provided, obviously, by the Russian state. And that means a complete transformation of the local governance systems, the local bureaucracies. And that produces also a whole new range of levers for…
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