This special issue provides a forum for discussion of what Belarusian Studies are today and which new approaches and questions are needed to revitalize the field in the regional and international academic arena. The major aim of the issue is to go beyond the narratives of dictatorship and authoritarianism as well as that of a never-ending story of failed Belarusian nationalism-interpretive schemes that are frequently used for understanding Belarus in scholarly literature in Western Europe and Northern America. Bringing together ongoing research based on original empirical material from Belarusian history, politics, and society, this issue combines a discussion of the concept of autonomy/agency with its applicability to trace how individual and collective actors who define themselves as Belarusian-or otherwise- have manifested their agendas in various practices in spite of and in reaction to state pressure. This issue offers new approaches for interpreting Belarusian society as a dynamically changing set of agencies. In doing so, it attempts to overcome a tradition of locating present Belarusian political and social dilemmas in its socialist past.

Introduction: Russian Media and the War in Ukraine, by Julie FedorPutin's Crimea Speech, 18 March 2014: Russia's Changing Public Political Narrative, by Edwin Bacon
Filtering Foreign Media Content: How Russian News Agencies Repurpose Western News Reporting, by Rolf Fredheim
"Gayromaidan": Gendered Aspects of the Hegemonic Russian Media Discourse on the Ukrainian Crisis, by Tatiana Riabova and Oleg Riabov
Historical Myths, Enemy Images, and Regional Identity in the Donbass Insurgency (Spring 2014), by Alexandr Osipian
Memory, Media, and Securitization: Russian Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis, by Elizaveta Gaufman
Combating the Russian State Propaganda Machine: Strategies of Information Resistance, by Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya
Infiltration, Instruction, Invasion: Russia's War in the Donbass, by Nikolay Mitrokhin
Ukraine and the Global Information War: Panel Discussion and Forum, Featuring:
Anne Applebaum; Margarita Akhvlediani; Sabra Ayres; Renaud de la Brosse; Rory Finnin; James Marson; Sarah Oates; Simon Ostrovsky; Kevin M. F. Platt; Peter Pomerantsev; Natalia Rulyova; Michael Weiss; Maksym Yakovlyev; Vera Zvereva
Reviews
Rasmus Nilsson on Andrew Wilson and Richard Sakwa
Anders Åslund on Karen Dawisha
Mykola Riabchuk on David Marples/Frederick Mills