ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the transformations of the concept of border in Ukraine through the analysis of both statements of leading politicians, official documents, and mass media reports, as well as everyday conceptions and practices of people of the new borderlands. Analysis of the shifting conceptualisations of borders of Ukraine at the level of both political elite and inhabitants of border areas will help with understanding the debates on the legislative field concerning the functions of state and customs borders. Furthermore, it will allow light to be cast on the main patterns change in the views of ordinary Ukrainians living on the borders of the country. As part of the analysis of the reactions of ordinary citizens to the new borderland reality three main components of how people perceive the new location and new quality of borders in the area where they lived are discussed. These include the attitude to official state borders of Ukraine, to the ethnicisation of the conflict in terms of belonging or not belonging to the ‘Russian world’ and finally to the everyday problems related by the crisis, especially to the roadblocks between the territory of Ukraine and the unacknowledged Donetsk and Luhansk National Republics.
