Whose war is it (or not)? Who speaks for whom? Discourses and Absences in the War on Ukraine

The war on Ukraine and the bifurcated discourses (political and academic) around it across different geographies are just one of the myriad manifestations of hierarchies, postcolonial continuities and contestations guiding global politics. The general political support for Ukraine and foundational norms of the international order such as non-intervention and sovereignty were broadly uncontested across the global North and the global South, the frames for the analysis, interpretation and implications vary drastically. In this paper, I examine the coloniality of frames and discourses used in the North/West to describe the war and the racialised hierarchies that exist within them. Specifically, I explore the politics of knowledge production regarding who sets the agenda and where, whose voices are prioritized and who is marginalised. By focusing on some perspectives from the global South, this paper foregrounds the responses of global South countries which have been marginalised in the war on Ukraine.