Ukraine, Russian fascism and Houdini geography: a conversation with Vitali Vitaliev

ABSTRACT Responding to the war in Ukraine, unleashed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and ongoing at the time of writing, this article carries the edited transcript of a conversation with Vitali Vitaliev, an independent journalist, author, travel-writer and ‘geographer’. Ukrainian-born with Russian as his first language, and now living and working in the UK, Vitaliev is being deeply affected – intellectually and emotionally, professionally and personally – by the horrors of the current situation. Over the course of the interview transcribed here, he covers aspects of his biography, in Ukraine and elsewhere, as well as reflecting on the geographical sensibility that shapes his writing and then elaborating, in various ways, his interpretation of what is unfolding presently in Ukraine. Fiercely critical of the forms of ‘Russian fascism’ underlying the assault on Ukraine ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Vitaliev discusses the psychological, historical and geopolitical roots of Putin’s actions. He also describes the cementing of a newly confident and dignified Ukrainian identity as a ‘counterforce’ to Putin’s ‘force’, hastening a trajectory whereby most Ukrainians, in both western and eastern Ukraine, are now attempting to escape the hauntings of the Soviet era.