CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue of the Journal “Youth Fighting for Their Future in Ukraine and Crimea”

2026-02-23

“Youth Fighting for Their Future in Ukraine and Crimea”

Dear Colleagues, Conference Participants, and Scholars,

In connection with the upcoming international conference “1461 Days of Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine: The Struggle Continues,” which will take place at the end of February, the Organizing Committee, under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Piotr Długosz, is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for a forthcoming special issue of the journal Youth in Central and Eastern Europe entitled:

“Youth Fighting for Their Future in Ukraine and Crimea.”

The special issue is conceived as an academic continuation of the discussions and reflections that the conference seeks to initiate. While the conference itself is still ahead of us, its preparation already raises fundamental scholarly and moral questions concerning the experiences of children and young people during the ongoing war. We invite scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit contributions examining the roles, experiences, and resilience of youth in wartime Ukraine. Today Ukraine faces an unprecedented historical reality in which children and young people encounter war in many different contexts: on the front line, in temporarily occupied territories, including Crimea, in the rear, in captivity, in exile, and within communities struggling to survive daily attacks. Many stories compel the international academic community to acknowledge the courage, suffering, and sacrifice of young Ukrainians. Among them were Tygran Oganesyan and Mykyta Khanhanov, sixteen-year-old teenagers killed by Russian occupying forces in temporarily occupied Berdiansk. In 2025 they were posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom. We also remember Stepan Chubenko, a sixteen-year-old from Kramatorsk who was tortured to death by Russian militants in 2014 simply because a blue-and-yellow ribbon was attached to his backpack.The war has also taken the lives of very young people fighting on the front line, among them: Serhii Tabala, aged 18, from the Sumy region, killed in combat on 6 November 2014 and posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine. Oleksandr Mykytiuk, aged 19, from the Vinnytsia region, killed at the front on 30 April 2018. Another tragic example is Viktoriia Roshchyna, a twenty-seven-year-old Ukrainian investigative journalist who was tortured to death in Russian captivity and posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom in 2025 by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The special issue will also draw attention to the persecution of young Crimean Tatars who continue to resist Russian repression in occupied Crimea. Many of them remain imprisoned simply because of their identity and civic position.

At the same time, we wish to highlight stories of extraordinary survival and resilience among children and youth in Ukrainian cities attacked by Russian forces.

Among them is Roman Oleksiiv, an eleven-year-old boy who miraculously survived a Russian missile strike on Vinnytsia; his mother was killed before his eyes, and he survived severe burns and injuries.

Another story is that of Viacheslav Vialov, who at the age of eighteen became the guardian of his four younger siblings after their mother was killed by Russian shelling.

We also recall the remarkable survival of Veronika Osintseva, aged twenty-three, who survived when a Russian missile destroyed her apartment building in Kyiv. Her parents were killed, while she miraculously survived after falling from the ninth floor together with her bed.

These stories represent only a small fraction of the experiences of Ukrainian youth during the war and highlight the urgent need for scholarly reflection and documentation.

CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue of the Journal “Youth Fighting for Their Future in Ukraine and Crimea”

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