Online Discussion with “Ecocide in Ukraine” Author Darya Tsymbalyuk

Register for this important virtual discussion with Darya Tsymbalyuk, author of Ecocide in Ukraine; The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War. Polity, 2025. The conversation will be led Tallinn University’s Epp Annus.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has not only destroyed millions of human lives, it has also been catastrophic for the environment. Forests and fields have been burned to the ground, animal and plant species pushed to the brink of extinction, soil and water contaminated with oil products, debris, and mines. The devastation of biodiversity and ecosystems across Ukraine has been immeasurable, long-lasting and its consequences stretch beyond national borders. In Ecocide in Ukraine, Ukrainian researcher Darya Tsymbalyuk offers an intimate portrait of her beloved homeland against the backdrop of Russia’s war and ecocide.

About the participants:

 Darya Tsymbalyuk is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU) at the University of Chicago. Her academic papers and public essays explore narratives about environments, multispecies worlds, displacement, embodied knowledge, and entangled colonial histories of Ukraine. Her writing has appeared on the BBC’s Future Planet and open Democracy websites, among many other publications. In addition to her research and writing, Darya also works with images through drawing, painting, collage, and video essays.

 Epp Annus is an associate professor at Tallinn University; she also lectures at Ohio State University (USA). Her interests include Baltic cultures and societies, Russian imperialism/colonialism, decoloniality, and environmental studies. Her recent and forthcoming books include Environment and Society in Soviet Estonia, 1960-1990 (Cambridge UP, forthcoming 2025) and Soviet Postcolonial Studies: A View from the Western Borderlands (Routledge, 2018). She has published two novels, some poetry and several children’s books. We are proud to note that in her free time, Epp happens to also be a council member of the Estonian American National Council.

This event is organized by Tallinn University, Institute of Humanities, the project PRG2592 “Memory and Environment: The Intersection of Fast and Slow Violence in Transnational European Literatures” and the project TF2324 “Exploring Patterns of Subject-Formation in Estonian Culture, 1956-1998”.

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