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The barbaric war of Russia against Ukraine is accompanied by the death of tens of thousands of people. Millions of Ukrainians were forced to leave their places of residence, hundreds of thousands had their homes completely destroyed, and a large part of the country's enterprises, energy and transport infrastructure was disabled. This war violates all international laws and, in fact, is a challenge to the entire civilized world. Its causes and consequences are discussed, analyzed, and considered by society and experts. Scientists do not ignore it either. The increase in publications on the topic of war and the uniqueness of this kind of research caused the desire to map the corresponding thematic landscape and identify the main trends. The methodological basis of analysis in the presented study was in-built Scopus instruments, Bibliometrix R package and Biblioshiny App, InfraNodus. The study includes two sections, namely, time section (compares publications for the entire period of the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine (2014–2023), as well as before and after the full-scale invasion (2020–2021 and 2022–2023), and geographical section (compares publications of international and Ukrainian scientific communities). The dynamics of publications, their structure by subject areas, countries, affiliations, authors, and sponsors were analyzed. According to the results of cluster, sentiment and narrative analysis, there is a shift in substantive emphasis after February 24, 2022 towards the interpretation of events as a full-scale war (52% of publications as a whole and 60% of publications by authors with Ukrainian affiliation), taking into account the consequences for the global energy, food, and other types of security. The identified structural gaps in the analyzed works create the basis for developing directions for overcoming the consequences of the war in various areas and post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.

The article aims to examine how the armed conflict affects the environmental safety and resilience of the urban environment in Ukraine. The author analyzes the impact of infrastructural, social, economic, and environmental resistance on the city’s ability to maintain a socioeconomic and ecological balance and minimize the mass destruction of its infrastructure. The article employs general scientific and special methods, including theoretical generalization, comparison, systematization, abstract-logical, prognostic, logical, and analytical methods. The article relies on an integrated approach when assessing environmental safety and its preservation; it primarily involves implementing preventive measures necessary to ensure the viability and sustainability of urban areas in the conditions of war and after its end. The findings confirm that a close interaction between public authorities, scientific institutions, public organizations, and the population can help to achieve sustainable development and urban environment safety in Ukraine. It is suggested to focus on climate-neutral post-war recovery and strengthen the potential of territorial communities in further scientific research.

PurposeThis paper analyses changes in the activity pattern of Damascus city from late modern era (late Ottoman rule) to the contemporary era. The research objective is to explore the impact of the socio-historical process on the evolving morphological structure of the urban core and to draw implications for post-war reconstruction.Design/methodology/approachSpace Syntax methodology was employed to trace the historical and morphological changes in the urban core of Damascus. The timeframe was divided into five periods covering the city's socio-political transformation and five maps depicting these periods. Local and global integration measures were used to analyse the changes in the urban core across each period. Normalised angular choice (NACH) measure was used to identify the changes in the city planning system.FindingsThe results revealed that the urban core corresponded to the main streets, which had socio-economic importance across history. However, introducing a new planning system influenced by Western planning ideals led to the creation of multi-morphological patterns. At the city level, the study found that the urban core was more accessible in the preplanned areas, while the organic expansion of the informal settlements was exclusive of the core area. At the local level, some informal settlements showed an intense core. Intelligibility analysis revealed that earlier periods showed considerably higher values, implying declines in the ease of navigation of the city over time.Research limitationsThis study did not account for the political, economic and cultural factors that could shape morphological changes in Damascus. In addition, the study adopted historical reference points to understand the morphological changes, as high-quality geospatial data was not available to monitor the recent post-war situation.Practical implicationsThe research findings give a foundation for a more contextualised historical understanding of spatial structure and changes, which can contribute to the post-war reconstruction and redevelopment of Damascus city.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to trace historical spatial changes in Damascus from a space syntax approach, weaving together socio-historical and configurational studies. In doing so, it shows how historically informed and spatially aware urban planning and design policies can support policymakers and built environment professionals in planning and redevelopment.

Russia’s audacious, unprecedented, illegal invasion of Ukraine, which began in a hybrid form in February 2014 before escalating into a full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, has brought with it a significant amount of destruction, multibillion-dollar losses, and damage beyond measure – both to the whole state and to each individual Ukrainian resident. As a result of Russian aggression, thousands of civilians have been killed, dozens of cities have been damaged by shelling and airstrikes, and countless enterprises, medical institutions, educational institutions, cultural heritage monuments, kilometres of road, and residential buildings have been destroyed. The war continues, meaning that the damage caused to Ukraine by Russia is steadily increasing with each new day. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, one of the most important tasks has been to find ways and means for post-war reconstruction in Ukraine, as well as for the payment of compensation to the victims of the war. These compensation mechanisms should be implemented alongside those that come at the expense of the funds of the Russian Federation, which, accordingly, necessitates the lawful capture of these funds from an array of possible sources (sovereign assets of the Russian Federation, the assets of Russian oligarchs, etc.). After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, civilized countries froze the assets of the external foreign exchange reserve of the central bank of the Russian Federation, along with the private assets of Russian oligarchs. After freezing assets, the next step on the path towards transferring to Ukraine the assets and funds of the Russian Federation (both sovereign assets and those of private persons), which are located in many countries around the world, should be their confiscation, since freezing alone is not an effective measure. An important task is to help states take this step and develop appropriate confiscation mechanisms in their national legislation. This article is devoted to the study of this issue, as well as to the comparative analysis of that which has already been achieved in this field.

The collapse of the Iron Curtain, the renationalization of eastern Europe, and the simultaneous eastward expansion of the European Union have all impacted the way the past is remembered in today's eastern Europe. At the same time, in recent years, the Europeanization of Holocaust memory and a growing sense of the need to stage a more \"self-critical\" memory has significantly changed the way in which western Europe commemorates and memorializes the past. The increasing dissatisfaction among scholars with the blanket, undifferentiated use of the term \"collective memory\" is evolving in new directions. This volume brings the tension into focus while addressing the state of memory theory itself.

This book looks beyond the headlines to uncover the controversial history of California's ballot measures over the past fifty years. As the rest of the U.S. watched, California voters banned public services for undocumented immigrants, repealed public affirmative action programs, and outlawed bilingual education, among other measures. Why did a state with a liberal political culture, an increasingly diverse populace, and a well-organized civil rights leadership roll back civil rights and anti-discrimination gains? Daniel Martinez HoSang finds that, contrary to popular perception, this phenomenon does not represent a new wave of \"color-blind\" policies, nor is a triumph of racial conservatism. Instead, in a book that goes beyond the conservative-liberal divide, HoSang uncovers surprising connections between the right and left that reveal how racial inequality has endured. Arguing that each of these measures was a proposition about the meaning of race and racism, his deft, convincing analysis ultimately recasts our understanding of the production of racial identity, inequality, and power in the postwar era.

Reforms in education often fail due to insufficient time to implement them, too few charismatic leaders, the influence of the preceding culture, scarce resources or an incapacity to comprehend the complexity of the education system. Most studies dealing with the cognitive aspects of educational change investigate the meaning of change through the lens of the educators and principals and there is not as much research available on the perception and interpretation of change by policy makers and the language they use to communicate messages about policy that affect sensemaking–sensegiving during the process of learning about the changes. Guided by the premise that the language of a reform movement is shaped by its ideology, this article illustrates how press releases of the Ministry of Education in Canton Sarajevo in Bosnia–Herzegovina reflect an exploitation-oriented dominant reform logic. The results of frequency analysis, hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling imply that MoE is driven by a top-down perspective to educational change, with a focus on the procedural, organizational and collaborational aspects of reforms that primarily alter the structure of the education system but not its internal substance. We end this paper by suggesting that educational system as complex adaptive system cannot be controlled, but effectively managed through distribution of control and creation of few attractors, benefiting from self-organization in the technical core and making change in the official top-down rhetoric.