ANTIMILITARIST DISCOURSE IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN PROSE ABOUT THE RUSSIAN – UKRAINIAN WAR

Abstract

The article examines the specifics of the antimilitarist representation of the Russian – Ukrainian war in contemporary Ukrainian prose as a holistic artistic and discursive phenomenon. The relevance of this study is determined by the need to interpret war not only as a historical and political event, but also as a complex anthropological, existential, and humanitarian phenomenon that radically transforms both individual and collective consciousness. The aim of the research is to identify artistic models for interpreting wartime reality through an antimilitarist lens, as well as to analyze the functioning of anti-colonial and postcolonial discourses in the contemporary literary process. The research material consists of works by contemporary Ukrainian writers (S. Talan, H. Vdovychenko, N. Fialko, Ye. Polozhii), which represent various models of artistic conceptualization of war. The methodological framework of the study is based on a combination of antimilitarist, anti-colonial, postcolonial, historical-literary, hermeneutic, narratological, and psychological approaches, enabling a multidimensional analysis of the texts. The study reveals that antimilitarist prose forms a distinct artistic system in which war is depicted as a space of dehumanization, moral crisis, and the breakdown of social bonds. It is demonstrated that the key features of this system include the deconstruction of war myths, the psychologization of traumatic experience, the critique of imperial narratives, and the representation of personality deformation under the influence of violence. The study also outlines a typology of characters (military personnel, civilians, collaborators, and representatives of occupying structures) through which the multidimensional nature of wartime experience is modeled. It is concluded that the antimilitarist representation of war in contemporary Ukrainian prose functions as an important mechanism for rethinking historical reality and for shaping a new humanistic paradigm of literature. Prospects for further research include gender analysis of wartime narratives, comparative studies of antiwar prose, and the exploration of emerging forms of literary representation of war.