This issue of the London Ukrainian Review is dedicated to justice. It explores how impunity for Russia’s crimes of the past breeds its genocidal war against Ukraine in the present. Ukrainians’ fight for justice is viewed from the standpoint of the Sixtiers and the Maidan generations, through the eyes of an art historian, lawyer, ex-serviceman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Ukraine is at the forefront of envisioning justice in a changing world. While acknowledging the immense individual toll of Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, Oleksandra Matviichuk sees possibilities for bringing war criminals to justice before the war ends, renewing the rule of law, and creating a future where justice can exist — if individuals do their part.

How does a pacifist find himself fighting Russian troops on the front line—together with other Ukrainians who had dedicated their lives to preserving human rights, lives, and culture? Yevhen Shybalov searches his personal history—from the lawless 1990s to the Revolution of Dignity to spring 2022—for the source of Ukrainians’ will to fight against injustice.

In the aftermath of the ground-breaking exhibition of modernism from Ukraine ‘In the Eye of the Storm’, its co-curator Katia Denysova reflects on justice in the realm of art history. Erased by Russian colonialism for centuries, the place of Ukraine’s artists and heritage in global cultural history must be restored.

Vasyl Stus was an extraordinary Ukrainian poet and dissident who died in a labour camp in Russia three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Bohdan Tokarskyi notes in his introduction to the poetry translations, Stus was ‘uncompromising in his pursuit of justice and the truth’ in his life and art.

Ukrainian state and civil society have responded to Russia’s war-related atrocities in ways that can galvanise transformations in the legal sphere both inside Ukraine and globally. Kateryna Busol uncovers the patterns of unwavering resilience and draws attention to the avenues for change it has opened up for the international community.