Russia’s War on Ukraine and the Crisis of World Order

Russia’s war on Ukraine has been closely watched and widely debated worldwide. These discussions extend beyond the war itself to encompass its implications for the world order and the future of globalisation. This reader documents that debate by bringing together articles from all regions of the world published in newspapers, journals, magazines, and blogs between Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Donald Trump’s election victory in 2024. The collection includes texts originally written in English as well as translations from Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. It offers reflections on international law and international organisations; postcolonial and decolonial critiques of power; rearmament, neutrality, and non-alignment; transregional religious solidarities; and the economic and environmental consequences of the war.

As part of the series GWZO Studies on Central and Eastern Europe: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Culture, History, and the Environment, this reader seeks to provide new, nuanced, and multifaceted insights into the region within the broader context of global (dis)entanglements.

Dennis Dierks is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Eastern and Southeastern European History at Leipzig University.

Katja Castryck-Naumann is a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) and has headed the research training group 'Global Armenia/ns: Entalngeld Histories of Central and Eastern Europe and teh Caucasus' since 2025.

Lena Dallywater is a researcher and academic coordinator in teh Cluster of Excellence Imaginamics at the University of Jena and was coordinator of the Leibniz ScienceCampus 'Eastern Europe - Global Area' (EEGA) from 2016 to 2025.

Stefan Rohdewald has held the Chair of Eastern and Southeastern European History at Leipzig University since 2020.