Pax McDonaldica before the storm: From geopolitical fault-line to urbicide in Mariupol, Ukraine

Abstract

Until 24 February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale attack on Ukraine, Mariupol, like many other Ukrainian government-controlled cities in the country's eastern regions, was trying to reinvent and rebrand itself as a modern European city. But it was missing something: the golden arches, that ubiquitous symbol of globalisation that can be found in almost any medium-sized city in Europe. Because McDonald's restaurants are perceived as powerful symbols of global capitalism and of Western or American culture, the establishment of new McDonald's restaurants has sometimes been challenged – even violently – by nationalist or anti-globalist forces. In Mariupol, which lost its status as a ‘McDonald's city’ at the beginning of the Donbas war in 2014, this was not the case. In this intervention, I describe how the restaurant was a symbolic centrepiece of local debates taking place in this geopolitical fault-line city, where deep divisions surrounding foreign policy and geopolitical preferences carried the potential for volatile and unpredictable urban conflict, trumping most frictions related to the city's diverse ethno-national structure. In its role as globally signifying flagship, McDonald's had generated an area of popular and political consensus – a Pax McDonaldica – while also acting as a (welcome?) distraction from a low-intensity war that had already lasted for eight years. This all came to an end when Russia attacked Ukraine, destroying much of the city, killing man thousands, forcefully displacing or deporting hundreds of thousands, and terrorising those left behind.