From reconfiguring the urban space to resisting Russia’s war: local civic engagement in Ukraine since 2014

This article examines how local civic groups in Dnipro, Kyiv, and Lviv in Ukraine repurposed their engagement since Russia’s full-scale invasion of that country. Following the trajectories of active participants in participatory budgeting, it focuses on the role of existing networks, established practices, and meaning-making processes for the local groups’ social resilience. Drawing from interviews and digital ethnography conducted in 2020–2021 and 2023, I identify the social embeddedness of residents’ engagement, pre-existing trust, and trust-building practices and cooperation with local authorities as crucial for social resilience. By emphasizing how different kinds of trust form, the article makes an essential contribution to scholarship on trust. With the finding that meaning-making processes are considerably more fluid than pre-established networks and practices, I add a cultural perspective to the social capital literature and elaborate on aspects shaping social resilience. I argue that the long-term resilience of the civic groups’ engagement in the three cities will depend on the role they attain in the local political setting beyond aid provision, especially regarding influence on decision-making processes.