Despite repeated warnings from the White House Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war-and why has it unfolded in previously
unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military the West has united while
Russia grows increasingly isolated. Serhii Plokhy a leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold
War offers a definitive account of this conflict its origins course and the already
apparent and possible future consequences. Though the current war began eight years before the
all-out assault-on February 27 2014 when Russian armed forces seized the building of the
Crimean parliament-the roots of this conflict can be traced back even earlier to post-Soviet
tensions and imperial collapse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a broad
historical context and an examination of Ukraine and Russia's ideas and cultures as well as
domestic and international politics Plokhy reveals that while this new Cold War was not
inevitable it was predictable. Ukraine Plokhy argues has remained central to Russia's idea
of itself even as Ukrainians have followed a radically different path. In a new international
environment defined by the proliferation of nuclear weapons the disintegration of the
post-Cold War international order and a resurgence of populist nationalism Ukraine is now
more than ever the most volatile fault line between authoritarianism and democratic Europe.
