EPF COMMITTEE VIOLENCE AND THE FEMININE Silent Wounds: Breaking Bodies, Breaking Bonds: The Russian War on Ukrainian Womanhood and Generations 31/01/2026

EPF COMMITTEE VIOLENCE AND THE FEMININE

31 th of January 2026, 10.30-12.15 CET with

Olena Kovtun, Yuliia Honchar, Natalia Bielova
Silent Wounds: Breaking Bodies, Breaking Bonds: The Russian War on Ukrainian Womanhood and Generations

These three presentations are united by a profound analytic attention to the feminine as a space of containment – a space that, in war, undergoes the most devastating ruptures. Through different clinical figures – from a mother losing her child, to a child surviving occupation, to a woman whose voice tears open the terrain of violence – we witness how the bond between self and other, between experience and its symbolization, between body and language, can fracture, fall silent, and yet at times be born again. Despite their different perspectives, all three presentations speak to the same psychic field: when there is no Other capable of holding, the psyche begins to disintegrate. At the center of this collapse lies the maternal, the feminine – that psychic space meant to contain, support, and give form to raw states. In this sense, the maternal is not biological but profoundly psychic: it is what makes survival in chaos possible. This panel does not offer ready-made answers. On the contrary, it invites us into shared reflection on our professional capacity to serve as a container for what has no words, to hold space for experiences that have not yet become language. At the same time, each presentation speaks not only of suffering, but also of the potential for restoration – slow, fragile, yet real – through connection, language, and presence. Yuliia Honchar

With two Ukranian lullabies, we wish everyone a world at peace in the new year Emanuela Quagliata, Michel Van Veen, Silvia Acosta, Peter Andersson, Olena Kovtun, Nadia Kozhouharova, Rolands Ivanovs, Carine Minne, Hana Salaam Abdel-Malek, Iris Sarajlić Vuković, Mary-Anne Tandy.

https://youtu.be/k-9K9LUrFfU?si=xhyBVlf86bL2HO1Y

https://youtu.be/B1r7QwC6qrs?si=90P5UvLnW0FsryWi