Jade’s Substack

Articles

No conditions for peace

4 days ago | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

Vladimir Putin has announced his willingness to resume negotiations with Ukraine in the Istanbul format. The statement was timed to coincide with renewed efforts by Ukraine and the United States to secure a temporary ceasefire—an initiative Moscow has now effectively undermined. While this may appear to be a signal of diplomatic movement, it is not a development.
19?? to 1945

1 week ago | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

Soviet war memorial. Kamyanka. March 2025. Own Photo. Kamyanka, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, no longer exists in any meaningful sense. What stands in its place is a shell—rusted and dusted ruins, cratered soil, broken homes. Not one house was left undamaged during its Russian occupation in 2022. At the centre of this wreckage stands a Soviet-era memorial to the Second World War: a stone soldier atop a platform of crumbling dates, “19__ – 1945.” The “41” has been chiselled off.
Blueprints

1 month ago | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

In 2021, the Russian Federation released its National Security Strategy, followed in 2023 by its Foreign Policy Concept. At the time—especially in 2021—one might have dismissed these documents as paranoid, backward-looking, or self-aggrandising. But they were not relics.
Consciousness

2 months ago | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

Some wars are about territory, others about power. Sometimes it seems like this war is about everything, but that might reflect my own engagement with it. Either way, as we have seen since late January, this war is also about consciousness—about how reality is interpreted, manipulated, and ultimately shaped. The ceasefire talks in Jeddah are no exception. Ukraine has signalled it is willing to accept an American proposal for a 30-day truce.
Despatch from Kharkiv

2 months ago | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote this piece for Engelsberg Ideas on the mood in Kharkiv on the two-year anniversary of the full-scale war. Reading it now is a pretty useful way to understand how European nations got into this mess. We don’t have another year to waste. We didn’t even have that year to waste. Written in Kharkiv. 24 Feb, 2024In Kharkiv, ordinary people didn’t do much to mark the two year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Sovereignty.

2 months ago | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

The war in Ukraine is, at its core, a battle over sovereignty. Not just in the legal sense, but in the raw, unfiltered reality of power and survival. It is a war over who gets to decide Ukraine’s future—Ukraine itself, or an external force imposing its will through military occupation, coercion, and exhaustion. While Ukraine fights, it is Europe (for these purposes:EU+EEA+UK) that has already lost.
That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

2 months ago | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

Before February 2022, I remember laughing at reports that Oleg Tsaryov was being considered for a senior position in a Kremlin-imposed puppet government in Ukraine. It seemed absurd—Tsaryov was a has-been, irrelevant since 2014, and so illegitimate in Ukrainian eyes that his appointment would have been farcical.
Extraction

Feb 11, 2025 | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

Russian propaganda presents a neat and tidy story of occupation. At home, the Kremlin tells Russians that the occupied territories were always Russian, that Ukrainian ownership was an illegitimate blip in history. In the occupied territories themselves, the message is that life is better now under Russian rule—shiny new buildings, restored infrastructure, a return to “normality.” And for Western audiences, the message is even simpler: nothing to see here.
(Ab)Normalisation

Jan 31, 2025 | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

Increasingly, I find it pointless to contribute to the policy debate around Ukraine in the UK. It’s not that there aren’t excellent roadmaps, policy papers, or analyses—there are. But none of it matters when there is no political will to engage with the reality of Russia’s war, let alone its consequences. The government won’t take the necessary steps, and I have no idea how to make them. Many colleagues here and in other European countries feel the same.
small deeds, Big War

Jan 27, 2025 | smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com | Jade McGlynn

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