For Ukraine, for their Freedom and Ours ! - CSO
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Cultural resistance
Since 2022, Pour l'Ukraine has been engaging in Ukrainian cultural resistance on two complementary fronts. It co-founded and leads the Europe-Ukraine Cultural Forum—a pan-European network of intellectuals, artists, and academics mobilized in eleven cities on February 24, 2023, to support a culture under siege. It also organizes, each year at the Avignon Festival, events that give voice to Ukrainian creators: readings, roundtables, and testimonials. In July 2026, for the second consecutive year, the "When Words Resist" events will be held on July 17 and 18 at the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and the Maison Jean Vilar.
"Our literature struggles to navigate against the current of muteness. The current of silence carries us away, and in this abyss of darkness and defilement, words are born. They are neither beautiful nor pleasant: they hurt, like arrows and bullets."
Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko,
Life on the Edge
Annual event - 2nd edition in 2026
Avignon with Ukraine: "When words resist"
Every year at the Avignon Festival—Europe's largest theater event— Pour l'Ukraine organizes meetings to give a voice to Ukrainian creators and thinkers. In 2026, for the second time, Ukrainian culture will be featured in Avignon.
For the second year, Ukraine will be present at the major annual cultural event that is the Avignon Festival, thanks to the generous hospitality of the Maison Jean Vilar and the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon.
From the Nazi occupation onward, the jurist Raphael Lemkin observed that the best way to destroy a nation was to eradicate its culture. This is precisely what Putin's Russia is doing: by systematically destroying, looting, and appropriating the artistic and archaeological heritage of the occupied territories of Ukraine, Moscow is attempting to erase the distinctiveness of a culture that does not belong to a supposed "Russian world." Its originality and authenticity are the hallmark of a sovereign people.
But Ukraine resists. On the front lines and in the hearts of its people, as well as in the work of its poets, novelists, playwrights, and thinkers. Never before have theater, cinema, poetry, and music experienced such effervescence and such resonance, even beyond the country's borders.
This creative vitality will be at the heart of the meetings we are organizing on July 17 and 18. To share their daily struggle for culture, Ukrainian writers, playwrights, and art professionals will be present at two events:
Avignon news with Ukraine
Tatiana Kudashova, three-time European taekwondo champion and world medalist, poses alongside Sergei Shoigu, Russian Defense Minister, after receiving a medal from the Ministry of Defense.
On her social media: pro-war posts, photos with Shoigu, and awards accepted from a governor sanctioned by Washington and London for his support of the invasion of Ukraine. The IOC demands neutrality from Russian athletes. Tatiana Kudashova illustrates why this neutrality is a fiction.
Alexis Nuselovici (Nouss) ,
Vice-Dean in charge of research, Faculty of Arts, Letters, Languages and Human Sciences (ALLSH), Aix-Marseille University
The Europe-Ukraine Forum, a chain of cultural solidarity
How can we give the notion of dignity, claimed by Ukrainians since Maidan in 2014, a full philosophical, aesthetic and political scope?
What can intellectual and academic resistance, its motives and effects, mean in the context of the war in Ukraine?
Professor of philosophy and director of the European Research Centre in the Humanities at Kyiv's "Mohyla Academy" National University, Constantin Sigov was an associate director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, was part of the editorial team of the European Vocabulary of Philosophies, and was a recipient of the PAUSE program at Paris 8 University in 2023-2024. He founded the publishing house Duh i litera (The Spirit and the Letter) in Kyiv, which publishes Ukrainian translations of French works of philosophy and the humanities.
A major intellectual figure in the resistance against the Russian war of aggression, he has published four books in France on the subject, including in 2023 The Courage of Ukraine (Éditions du Cerf) and Philosopher Under the Bombs . With Ukraine in Resistance (PUF).
Symposium on the occasion of the
Award of the Honorary Doctorate (Aix-Marseille University)
to Constantin Sigov
With :
Alexis Nous (Aix-Marseille University, " The Dignity of Resistance ")
Sylvie Wauquiez (Paris 8) " A university facing the Ukrainian question "
Lenka Karfikova (Charles University, Prague) " Ukraine as a Memento "
Marguerite Léna (Saint Francis Xavier Community), " The Choice of Europe "
Véronique Nahoum-Grappe (EHESS), " Freedom / Dignity "
Barbara Cassin (CNRS, French Academy) " What does it mean to resist for a language? "
Fabrice Puchault (Society-Culture Unit, Arte France) " Generation Ukraine: What documentary cinema could do "
Soko Phay (Paris 8), " War in Ukraine, art and resistance "
Volodymyr Yermolenko (Moyhla National Academy University, Kyiv), " Dignity versus violence: lessons from the Ukrainian resistance "
Jean-Louis Fournel (Paris 8), " Translating, he said: Constantin Sigov and the translation of untranslatables "
Constantin Sigov, "Response(s)
"How can we help Ukraine and Europe win the cultural war that Russia is waging against them?"
Across Europe, the cultural world is affirming its solidarity with the Ukrainian people! On February 24, 2023, the foundations were laid for a "new humanist movement bringing together intellectuals and activists from different countries."
The war that Putin's Russia is waging against Ukraine is a war against its culture and against culture in general. The Kremlin declares the values of democracy, freedom, and critical thinking that shape European culture to be decadent. In effect, Ukraine finds itself compelled to defend them, on behalf of us all, against Russia. European cultural actors mobilized on February 24, the anniversary of the Russian army's invasion of Ukraine.
With what they know how to do – their words, their ideas and their imaginations – they have spoken out to show that they stand with the Ukrainian people in their daily trials, to help them win the war and prepare for their future.
CITIES IN MOBILIZATION:
In Kyiv, Sophia Androukhovych and Volodymyr Yermolenko (writers) ...
In Tbilisi, Guram Odisharia and Beka Kurkhuli (writers) ...
In Sofia, Theodora Dimova (novelist), Yordan Eftimov (essayist)...
IN BUCHAREST, Mihaela Pop (philosopher), Vladimir Cretulescu (historian) ...
IN WARSAW, Agnieszka Holland (filmmaker), Andrzej Seweryn (actor, member of the Comédie Française) ...
IN KRAKOW, Krystian Lupa (director), Oksana Zaboujko (philosopher), Sergiy Jadan (Ukrainian novelist and rocker)...
IN ROME, Nicolas Martino (philosopher and art critic), Francesca Bellino (writer and journalist) ...
IN MADRID, Esther Bendahan (novelist), Juan Miguel Hernández León (architect, Director of Círculo de Bellas Artes) ...
In Berlin, Gerd Koenen (historian), Camille de Toledo (writer)...
In Brussels, Sophie Muselle (actress) …
IN PARIS, Robin Renucci (Artistic Director of La Criée, Marseille), Marcel Bozonnet (actor), Jonathan Littell (writer); Omar Souleimane (poet)...
What can cultural actors do against war – in times of war or in opposition to war?
Opened by Katyryna Kalytko, a leading figure in contemporary Ukrainian poetry, four online roundtables – “Should Pushkin be burned?”, “The era of camps”, “Are Fascism and genocide dirty words?”, “War on war” – brought together sixteen academics from Ukraine, Georgia, Italy and France on December 2, 2022, culminating in a lecture by the essayist Camille de Toledo.
The war in Ukraine, in addition to its serious human and political dimensions, has brought the question of culture back to the forefront on two major points.
The aggression against Ukraine, on the one hand, is explicitly presented as an aggression against its identity, embodied in its language and culture.
On the other hand, Ukrainian public opinion reacted to this aggression by rejecting Russian culture, particularly in linguistic and artistic matters.
Inaugural conference:Kateryna Kalytko with Irina Dmytrychyn (INALCO)
Alexis Nuselovici (Nouss) Vice-Dean in charge of research Faculty of Arts, Letters, Languages and Human Sciences, Aix-Marseille University
"Should Pushkin be burned?" (The War of Cultures and Languages)
Natalja Jatskiv (Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University)
Atinati Mamatsashvili (Ilia State University, Tbilisi)
Dmytro Tchystiak (Taras Shevchenko National University)
Nicolas Tournadre (Aix-Marseille University)
The era of camps, again, always (Haunting and politics)
Gérard Bensussan (University of Strasbourg)
Luba Jurgenson (Paris-Sorbonne University)
Jacobo Machover (University of Avignon)
Eva Raynal (INU Champollion, Albi)
Are fascism and genocide swear words?(Lexicon and ideology)
Jean-Marc Dreyfus (Sciences Po, Paris)
Pierre Raiman (Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne)
Charles Zaremba (Aix-Marseille University)
War on war (The commitment of intellectuals, artists, institutionscultural)
Cinzia Cadamagnani (U. of Pisa)
Véronique Nahoum-Grappe (EHESS)
Oxana Melnychuk (“United for Ukraine” Association)
Emmanuel Wallon (Paris-Nanterre)
Closing conferenceure
“If Stefan Zweig could speak… Memory of a European faced with the war in Ukraine” by Camille de Toledo