Western academics experts and journalists specializing in Eastern Europe Russia and Eurasia
have grappled with two fundamental analytical crises in connection with the 1991 disintegration
of the USSR and Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Both crises were brought about by a similar
lack of understanding of Moscow's inability to view its neighbors in particular Ukraine as
not possessing sovereignty and not treating them as independent states. Typically they
downplayed the historic and current role of Russian imperialism and nationalism. The book's
contributors investigate how the Kremlin's recent turbo-charging of Russia's information
warfare 24-hour TV and social media activity has expanded on traditional pro-Russian
sentiments among Western academics experts and journalists. The authors analyze the
downplaying of Russian nationalism misinterpretations of the 2014 crisis sympathetic
portrayals of Crimea's occupation and the use of the term civil war rather than
Russian-Ukrainian war for the Donbas conflict in academia as well as the think tank world and
media in the UK Germany Poland Czech Republic Japan USA and Canada.
