On February 24, 2022, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, an act of unprovoked aggression not seen in Europe since World War II that summoned up ominous historical parallels. Memories of Munich
The world watched in horror as Russian missiles took aim at civilian targets. But there was also widespread admiration for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who defied offers to assist his flight to a safe haven abroad by reportedly declaring that: “The fight is here: I need ammunition, not a ride.” But while most Ukrainians were indeed grateful for the outpouring of critical support from abroad, there was also background noise fraught with frustration: Russia had actually been making war on Ukraine since 2014, even if much of the planet never seemed to notice it.
Since, at least until very recently, most Americans could not easily locate Ukraine on a map, it is perhaps less than surprising that few were aware of the active Russian belligerency in Ukraine for the eight years prior to the full scale invasion that made cable news headlines. Many still do not know what the current war is really about. That vast sea of the uninformed is the best audience for The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History [2023] by award-winning Harvard professor and historian Serhii Plokhy.
The conflict in Ukraine has spawned two competing narratives, and although only one is fact-based, the other—advanced by Putin and his neofascist allies in Europe and the United States—has gained dangerous currency as of late. In the fantasy “world according to Putin,” Ukraine is styled as a “near abroad” component integral to Russia with a shared heritage and culture that makes it inseparable from the Russian state. At the same time, Ukraine has brought invasion upon itself by seeking to ally itself with Russia’s enemies. And, somehow concomitantly, Ukraine is also a rogue state run by Nazis—never mind that Zelenskyy himself is of Jewish heritage—that obligates Moscow’s intervention in order to protect the Ukrainian and Russian populations under threat. That none of this is true and that much of it is neither logical nor even rational makes no difference. Putin and his puppets just keep repeating it, because as we know from Goebbels’ time, if you keep repeating a lie it becomes the truth.
And that truth is more complicated, so of course far more difficult to rebut. It is always challenging for nuance to compete with talking points, especially when the latter are reinforced in well-orchestrated efforts peddled by a sophisticated state-run propaganda machine that has an international reach. Ukraine and Russia, as well as Belarus, do indeed share a cultural heritage that can be traced back to the ninth century Kyivan Rus’ state, but then a similar claim can be made about France and Germany and their roots in the Carolingian Empire a bit farther to the west—with the same lack of relevance to their respective rights to sovereignty in the modern day. And Russian origins actually belong to fourteenth century Muscovy, not Kyiv. In its long history, Ukraine has been incorporated into Tsarist Russia and its successor state, the Soviet Union, but its vast parcels were also at various times controlled by Mongols, by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, by Austria, and even by a
Fortunately, The Russo-Ukrainian War is far more readable and accessible, without sacrificing the impressive scholarship that marks the foundation of all Plokhy’s work. And thankfully the course of Ukraine’s recent past—the focus here—is far less convoluted than in prior centuries. While contrary to Putin’s claim, Ukraine is not an inextricable element of the Russian state, their modern history has certainly between intertwined. But that changed in the post-Soviet era, and the author traces the paths of each in the decades since Ukraine’s independence and Russia’s drift under Putin’s rule from a fledgling democracy to neofascist authoritarianism.
Ukraine became a sovereign state in 1991 upon the dissolution of the USSR, along with a number of former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Overnight, Ukraine became the second largest European nation (after Russia) and found itself hosting the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. As part of an agreement dubbed the “Trilateral Statement,” Ukraine transferred its nuclear weapons to Russia for destruction in exchange for security assurances from Russia, Britain, and the United States. This crucial moment is too often overlooked in debates over aid to Ukraine. Not only has Russia plainly violated this agreement that the United States remains obligated to uphold, but there surely could have been no Russian invasion had Ukraine hung on to those nukes.
Ukraine suffered mightily in its decades as a Soviet republic—most notably during Stalin’s infamous man-made famine known as the “Holodomor” (1932-33) that killed millions of Ukrainians—but 1991 and its aftermath saw a peaceful divorce and both nations go their separate ways. Each suffered from economic dislocation, corruption, and political instability at this new dawn, but despite shortcomings throughout this transition, Ukrainians looked to the West, saw greater integration with Europe as central to their future, and embraced democracy, if sometimes imperfectly.
Meanwhile, Russia stumbled. Some of this can be laid to missed opportunities by the West for more significant economic aid and firmer support for emerging democratic institutions when Russia needed it most, but much of it was organic, as well. Vladimir Putin, a little-known figure, stepped into a leadership role. With slow, calculated, and somewhat astonishing proficiency, former KGB operative Putin gradually dismantled democracy while generally preserving its outward forms, cementing his control in an increasingly authoritarian state—one which most recently seems barreling towards a kind of Stalinist totalitarianism. Along the way, Putin crafted an ideological framework for his vision of a new Russia, born again as a “great power,” by borrowing heavily from 1930s era fascism, resurrected and transformed for the millennium.
Interestingly, while I was reading The Russo-Ukrainian War, I also read The Road to Unfreedom [2018], Timothy Snyder’s brilliant study of how
Like Hitler, Putin first sought to achieve his objectives without war. For Ukraine, that meant bribery, disinformation, election interference, and other tactics. And Putin nearly succeeded with former president Viktor Yanukovych—who attempted to effect a sharp turn away from the West while placing Ukraine firmly into Russia’s orbit—until he was toppled from power and fled to Moscow in 2014. A furious Putin replayed Hitler’s moves in Sudetenland and in the Austrian Anschluss: puppet separatists agitated for independence and launched civil war in Ukraine’s east, and Crimea was annexed by Russia following a mock referendum. The war in Ukraine had begun.
The Obama Administration, in concert with the West, responded with economic sanctions that proved tepid, at best, and went on with their business. Ukrainians fought courageously in the east to defend what remained of their territory against Russian aggression. Meanwhile, Donald Trump moved into the Oval Office, voicing overt hostility towards NATO while projecting a startling brand of comraderie with Vladimir Putin. Snyder wryly observes in The Road to Unfreedom that the last advisor to the last pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was none other than Paul Manafort, who then became the campaign manager to candidate Donald Trump. You can’t make this stuff up.
If Snyder sometimes leans to the polemic, Plokhy strictly sticks to history, even if the two authors’ perspectives essentially run parallel. The Russo-Ukrainian War is most of all a well-written, competent history of those two nations and of their collisions on and off the battlefield that spawned a full-scale war—one that did not need to occur except to further Putin’s neofascist nationalist ambitions.
These are grim moments for Ukraine. But also for America, for the West, for the free world. With all the propaganda, the misinformation, the often fake news hysteria of social media, the average American voter may not know what to believe about Ukraine. For a dose of reality, I would urge them to read The Russo-Ukrainian War. And, given the stakes this November—not only for Ukraine’s sovereignty but for the very survival of American democracy—I would advise them to take great care when casting their ballot, because a vote for Putin’s candidate is a vote for Putin, and perhaps the end of the West as we know it.
Link to my review of: The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy
Link to my review of: The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder
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