Abstract

This paper examines the representation of political issues in the fild of civil protection as vital for society and the state, i.e. their politicization and securitization, conducted by Ukrainian political actors last years in the conditions of security crisis. Last two years Ukraine has being faced unprecedented security challenges to protect its territorial integrity and sovereignty that determine tasks for security and defense sector. Although military component is of high importance but diplomatic, economic and information components play role to eliminate security threats. In order to mobilize resources and justify emergency measures those to be taken in crisis situation, political leadership of the State should represent certain security threat as most critical or even existential threat. This process was in a focus of Copenhagen Peace Research Institute in 1980s and 1990s, while B.Buzan and O.Weaver introduced term “securitization” to describe this political process. Although there are many threats for national security, a few could be securitized and others could be politicized, i.e. discussed in the public debates and realized as signifiant but not existential. Securitization belongs to constructivist branch of security studies that may be characterized as applied researches. Despite rising interest of securitization studies in Ukraine, there is lack of applied researches to describe particular components of national security. We focused on securitization and politicization of civil protection issues in contemporary security environment in Ukraine. The issues of ensuring public health and safety as well as protection of environment against man-made and natural disasters were repeatedly included into agenda of discussions at the highest Ukrainian political level since independence. However, it can be argued that these threats were neither expressed by the Ukrainian political leadership nor perceived by the public as existential threat, and therefore there was no process of securitization. The main aim of securitization is not to demonize a particular threat, but to mobilize countering this threat. Moreover, the implementation of securitization may provide opportunities for the state to apply emergency measures in a particular fild of governance. These emergency measures include the revision and redistribution of responsibilities under emergency situations. However, this revision is hard to be conducted, and despite necessity of more pragmatic requirements for business and society politicians both government and opposition trend to make populist decisions that was shown in the case of Chernobyl accident consequences overcoming. Civil protection issues in Ukraine were politicized by President, Government, political parties, certain politicians, NGOs and activists. It was done mainly in a form of offiial documents, but also by the process of emergency situation declaration, and political leadership speeches. Since January 2015 Ukrainian government established the State Commission on technogenic and ecological safety and emergencies that was actively used to resolve several urgent problems regarding civil protection. We also should stress that Ukrainian President on his speech on the UN General Assembly underlined that military action against Ukraine increased environmental and epidemiological threats in the Eastern Ukraine, and he suggested that the UN should make efforts to address environmental issues in the areas of military conflcts. Thus Ukrainian President politicized civil protection issues on the international level.