Thank you for reading The Checkpoint! Some of you may already know me from social media (mostly on Bluesky & Twitter), from the articles that I’ve written on Medium, from academic conferences… and/or hanging around in bars (ahem), etc. If so: welcome! I’m really glad to have you here!

For everyone else who might not be acquainted with me, I want to take a minute to introduce myself and where I’m coming from, and talk a bit about what I envision for The Checkpoint.

So, to begin with, my name is Vincent Artman. I hold a PhD in geography, specializing in political and cultural geography. My focus, over the years, was initially on Russia and later shifting to the states that gained their independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As an undergraduate studying history and geography who gravitated towards what is typically called “Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies,” I received what, in hindsight, was a fairly standard Russocentric education: I took courses in Russian history; Russian culture; Russian language; and Russian literature. Not much else was available at my undergraduate institution at the time: there were no courses about Ukraine; no regional languages taught other than Russian; no specialists on Central Asia. If you wanted to to specialize in “Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies,” what you learned about was Russia.

It was only when I was working on my Master’s degree and, later, my Ph.D., that I began to step outside of that little epistemic bubble and reexamine the whole discourse about Russia and Russian history from a different perspective, in part because my studies became a lot more self-directed.

As a PhD student, I had an opportunity (and a rather unique one, given the circumstances) to co-teach a course about the former Soviet Union along with a colleague who was… a bit more Russophilic than myself, to put it mildly. Coming from the perspective of someone researching Central Asia and who was increasingly interested in Ukraine, it struck me how large the gulf was between the two us: oftentimes it felt like we weren’t even talking about the same subject (though, for what it’s worth, I think that tension was ultimately good for students, who, at the very least, enjoyed watching us bicker with one another).

Just to give you a sense of what interests me, I’ve done research about Russian passportization in the breakaway “de facto” states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which I later published in the journal Geopolitics. My dissertation, meanwhile, explored the relationship between religion and national identity. A few articles came out of that work, but I’m particularly proud of this one in Europe-Asia Studies. Elsewhere, I’ve also written about American soft power in Central Asia; the connection between borders and identity; resource nationalism and sacred spaces; the Soviet legacy in Central Asia; and the human dimensions of the death of the Aral Sea, among other things.

Starting in 2011 I also became increasingly connected with Ukraine. I’ve been visiting here since 2015 (initially to Odesa but later living primarily in Kyiv). When the full-scale invasion began in 2022, I became involved in fundraising and advocacy in the United States and made the decision to come back to Ukraine in 2023. I’ve been living here on and off since then, with stints in the US and Vienna, working as a writer, editor, activist, and scholar.

As you might imagine, this has necessitated a lot of travel, and that has both given me a lot of time to think about things I’d like to write about and left me with less time and energy to actually do the kind of writing that I’ve traditionally done.

As I mentioned before, I’ve published a number of essays on my Medium site. These essays largely focus on the intersection of politics, society, and the personal in Ukraine during wartime. Most recently (at the time of writing) I published an article in Current dealing with the notion of “survivor’s guilt” and how it relates to those of us with the privilege of not living in a war zone and experiencing genocide. But writing those sorts of essays can be a slow, laborious process, and I’ve found myself wanting an outlet for other kinds of writing.

The Checkpoint, then, is meant to be something of a companion to my Medium site. I plan to continue working on my essays as before, but I want to use the Substack for shorter and more informal (and, perhaps, more timely!) writing. While much of my attention will still be devoted to Ukraine and related fields, I’ll also likely venture into other stuff as well, as the mood strikes me… because why not?

Finally, The Checkpoint, like my essays on Medium, is meant to be free. Everything I write here will be available to everyone. That being said, writing is labor and it’s labor that I have to balance with doing other stuff that provides (increasingly unstable) income.

Medium’s subscription model, however, has always struck me as much too restrictive. Substack, on the other hand, allows me to set up what are in essence optional paid subscriptions while still keeping the newsletter itself free. In other words, if you like what I do, then you can still subscribe and kick me a few bucks each month to help support my work. Think of it not so much as an “honor system” thing as a way of expressing your support and appreciation. (I think just to reduce the possibility of spam and abuse, however, I’m going to leave comments as “paid subscriber” only for now.)

I’m not really sure what else to write here, so I just want to thank in advance everyone who takes their time to read my work: it’s literally because of you that I bother to do this at all.