September 2022
“In the early morning of February 24, 2022, I woke up to three loud explosions that shook my windows and everything around. These were the shock waves of the missile explosions that hit Kramatorsk, the administrative center of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. I evacuated from the city on a crowded train, leaving everything behind. Later, the railway station was hit by a missile strike, leaving 60 dead and 120 wounded.”
“In times of war, being an endangered scholar feels like being an endangered species. You have to follow your instincts to survive. While hearing distant and not-so-distant explosions on my last days in Kramatorsk, I was working on a book review of How Corruption and Anti-Corruption Policies Sustain Hybrid Regimes. Strategies of Political Domination Under Ukraine’s Presidents in 1994–2014 by Oksana Huss, on invitation from Slavic Review. I submitted the review the evening before the departure—scholarly duty above everything else.”
The full text is available here.
Image caption: Professor Osipian and his mother after registering as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).