Political Care: Ukrainian Female Grassroots

Since the first day of the Russian re-invasion in 2022, Ukrainian social collectives, individuals, and online communities have mobilized to help those affected by the war, often stepping in urgently when the state falls short. While these responses initially address immediate crises, the deeper question is what sustains them beyond urgency? In essence, the activism and volunteerism in Ukraine are not isolated acts of kindness. Instead, they are rooted in relationship-building and bond-making. Two years of ethnographic research with Ukrainian female grassroots networks show that, in times of crisis, care extends beyond familial ties to a broader sense of obligation to community, history, and the ongoing struggle against colonial erasure. Through the concept of political care, this thesis traces how Ukrainian activists construct relationally and historically informed responses to both immediate and long-standing threats to their communities. Far beyond mere survival strategies, these networks embody a dynamic model of civic engagement in which personal responsibility intersects with collective resilience, transcending traditional frameworks of governance and welfare. This care is political because it emerges from a recognition of the historical and political conditions that make it necessary in the first place. While developed in the specific context of Ukraine, political care is rooted in the stories of diverse groups worldwide fighting against the shadows of colonial pasts. At the same time, political care must be understood within capitalist, patriarchal, and corrupt structures within which it exists. This thesis shows how Ukrainian grassroots actors and civic society fill the gaps where the state fails. These phenomena sustained for over a decade point to the complex and often paradoxical relationship between citizens and the state, between responsibility and duty. This thesis proceeds in four chapters. The first two chapters reflect on the conditions under which my research took place: violence and war. Rather than treating violence as an abstract universal or isolating it to spectacular brutality, this thesis argues that it must be understood as embedded in histories, bodies, relationships, and everyday life. In such contexts, the focus should fall not on violence itself but on the subjectivities of those who navigate and resist it. Here I also explore how the ‘triangle of violence’ can shift attention from acts to the actors entangled within violent systems. The third introduces the concept of political care as it emerges from Ukrainian grassroots activism and volunteerism. The fourth explores key elements of this lived practice: responsibility beyond neoliberal individualism and the role of informal knowledge-sharing in sustaining solidarity. The fifth examines the tensions and frictions within political care practices, showing how the long-term political work of restoring Ukraine and resisting Russian imperialism also entails confronting the failures of the Ukrainian state itself.