This issue of the London Ukrainian Review takes a look at culture as a matter of national security. Highlighting the voices of cultural figures who defend Ukraine with arms, it also examines culture as a tool of Russia’s imperialist expansion, all the while insisting on a bond between cultural familiarity and political solidarity.

How can Ukraine’s culture of resistance serve the country’s security? Olesya Khromeychuk spoke to Peter Pomerantsev about the subtleties of waging information warfare, the challenges of cultivating a world of truth and justice today, and creating the kind of space where democracy can be practised.

Ukrainian wartime poetry transcends literary convention. These poems by defenders Eva Tur, Vasek Dukhnovskyi, and Valeriy Puzik embody a culture being forged in the fight for its survival — verse written between battles, resounding with courage born of conscious choice and civic conviction.

Why does the West consistently overlook Russian imperialism while scrutinising its own colonial past? Edward Lucas exposes how Western media and academia’s Moscow-centric worldview undermines Ukraine and perpetuates centuries-old imperial blind spots that still shape geopolitics today.

Respected author, PhD in political science, combat medic in the Armed Forces of Ukraine — Kateryna Zarembo’s story is not unusual. Writing from her frontline position, she elucidates why Ukrainian writers, artists, and performers interrupt successful cultural careers to join the military defence of their homeland.

Is the concert hall truly a haven, or a subtle instrument of empire? Leah Batstone unveils how musical programming wields geopolitical influence, offering strategies for elevating Ukrainian music within global repertoires, thereby fortifying the nation’s cultural security.

To understand how to reinforce Ukraine’s security, we must examine the strategies being used to undermine it. Uilleam Blacker argues that culture is a crucial element of Russia’s aggression, and that cultural support for Ukraine can be an effective tool in a broader security policy.

House keys recur in the family stories of both Crimean Tatars and Palestinians displaced from their respective homelands in the 1940s, and in accounts of Ukrainian citizens fleeing Russian invasion since 2014. Maria Sonevytsky traverses ethnographic research and discourses of storytelling, art, and justice to show how house keys elicit stories, securing an exiled people’s history from oblivion.