Observations From the War in Ukraine

Published online: 22 December 2022

© The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2022

From Wilfred Bion’s experience as a tank commander in the First World War, to Freud’s hasty exit from Vienna during the Second World War, to the terror experienced by Argentinian psychoanalysts during Argentina’s dirty war, psychoanalysts have been participants in and witnesses to war, conflict, and social upheaval. The current war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine is no exception. Many members of the Ukrainian psychoanalytic community and their families have been displaced internally or forced to flee abroad, and some are participating in the defense of Ukraine. Many will not have homes, offices, or cities to return to. They are also living in the shadow of potential nuclear annihilation. Psychoanalyst Igor Romanov has led monthly Zoom meetings of the Friends of the Ukrainian Psychoanalytic Society to muster support for our Ukrainian colleagues; to provide opportunity to bear witness to the unfolding cataclysmic tragedy that Russia would recognize euphemistically and obscenely as “a special military operation;” and to contemplate ways in which psychoanalytic discourse can help frame both the current displacement and massacres, and the longer-term sequelae of these events.1 Romanov, of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, has had an inside view of the unfolding events, and, indeed, he has offered summary comments on these events at the Friends of the Ukrainian Psychoanalytic Society meetings. In what follows, Romanov shares a commentary on the war by himself, and this is followed by a response from his friend and teacher Paolo Fonda, of Trieste, Italy.

These commentaries invite us to view a first draft of history from a psychoanalytic perspective. The work allows us to bear witness to professional