From garbage wars to green city: Defining Ukraine's European identity

Abstract

Abstract A 2016 fire at a landfill near the western city of L'viv instigated a political crisis around the issue of waste management in Ukraine. The ensuing debates among the L'viv city government, the national government, and local stakeholders show how waste management becomes a mechanism through which to interrogate questions of state‐citizen relations and what it means to be part of Europe. This article argues that processes of Europeanization rely on the arbitrary application of standards and result in a hierarchy in which countries such as Ukraine are considered not‐yet‐fully European. However, this does not prevent pro‐European Ukrainians, who ground their vision of Ukraine's European future in the 2013–2014 Euromaidan protests, from advocating for Ukraine to adopt European standards. This article homes in on the shifting relationship between citizens and state representatives and the development of ecological consciousness as key points by which interlocutors measured Ukraine's path toward Europe, showing how the crisis around waste management in L'viv allows for the contestation of Europeanness itself. While not all Ukrainians have adopted these ideas about European Ukraine, in the context of Russia's devastating invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainians have become increasingly united around the idea of a European future.