From individual to collective: vernacular security and Ukrainian civil society in wartime

Through a vernacular security lens, this article examines which meanings of security have driven Ukrainian civil society’s collective action in response to the Russo-Ukrainian war, which began with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. It draws on a four-year study (2018–2022) of civic engagement in wartime Ukraine, involving in-depth interviews with members of army support groups, humanitarian organizations, volunteer battalions, and anti-disinformation groups. The article challenges vernacular security studies’ tendency toward methodological individualism by showing how collective civic resistance produces shared security understandings that transcend individual-level constructions of security. The emergence of a new plural security actor from below blurs the elite/non-elite binary foundational to vernacular security scholarship, as citizen groups become prominent security voices without losing their community connections. The article finds that despite initially focusing primarily on military security, civil society groups’ discourse evolved to encompass emancipatory and societal security dimensions, emphasizing both freedom from authoritarian control and the preservation of Ukrainian national identity. As a result, this research also contributes to theoretical bridge-building between vernacular and other critical approaches to security while addressing an important gap in our understanding of civilian agency during armed conflict.