Chapter 3: National Minority Civil Society Organizations in Wartime

Abstract This article examines how the war in Ukraine has impacted the work of the civil society organizations of national minorities (hereinafter CSOs). The author looks into the operational specifics of three such CSOs during the first year of the war. Each organization represents a different ethnic group (i.e. Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Romanians), and is located in multi-ethnic regions of Ukraine, i.e. Odesa, Zakarpattia (or Transcarpathia, which is an alternative name for the region), and Chernivtsi respectively. Before the war, the CSOs focused on the preservation and promotion of ethnic cultures. Through desk research and interviews with the organizations’ representatives, the author attempts to answer the following sub-questions: have the organizations managed to continue working? What were their activities? Was it at all possible to promote ethnic cultures in wartime? Which risks and opportunities for their operation resulted from the war? The key finding is that the CSOs did shift their focus from the traditional realm of cultural affairs to humanitarian work. With the former activities not interrupted fully, the organizations have combined the implementation of duties from both realms, de facto operating on a wider mandate. Being a consequence of the CSOs’ ad hoc work in times of crisis, such extended engagement inter alia posed some additional opportunities for amplifying minorities’ influence in decision-making. A wider mandate is, therefore, examined by the author through the lens of its added value for improving the situation of minorities’ effective participation in public and political life in Ukraine. Inter alia , the study aims at documenting the contribution made by national minority CSOs in resisting Russia’s war of aggression.