Wartime Malleability: Shopping malls and the everyday urban experience in the Russian War on Ukraine

Since the beginning of the millennium, neoliberal East European cities have seen a profound growth in the number of malls. At the same time, much of the war in Ukraine is taking place on terrain which can be defined as 'urban'. As a result, the mall has become deeply integrated into the ongoing war, an interaction which is a relatively new phenomenon, exhibited in Russia's war on Ukraine on a remarkable scale.

My research examines ongoing metamorphoses within shopping malls in Ukraine, Russia, and Poland since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine - not only their physical bombardment, but also their reconstruction and other transformations including their use as refugee shelters, as a quasi-public sphere, and their reflection of shifting geopolitical dynamics. My aim is to present some of the many ways in which urban space is transformed by war, both subjected to extreme violence and destruction but also a space for life, of refuge and even (relative) peace. This analysis of the shopping mall provides both wide ranging and also extremely specific manifestations of the ways in which neoliberal urban space is transformed during wartime, developing understandings of the everyday urban experience of Russia's war on Ukraine.