A brief history of Ukraine

What Putin left out and what we need to know to understand what is happening in Ukraine today The present grows out of the past, and the past grows out of the one before it. We cannot understand today’s Ukraine without knowing what happened there during the Soviet era, especially during the key event in its history: the Second World War. But even that did not arise in a geopolitical vacuum. For many hundreds of years, Ukraine was a border in the sense of the English word 'frontier': a border as a territory, not a line. A border as an area of risk, fighting, and conflict, but also of innovation and freedom. A border as the expansion of order into a space previously untamed, undifferentiated, and unmarked. The history of Ukraine does not in any way justify Russian aggression. It does, however, help us to understand what is happening there and why, what forces are at play, and what stories the participants in the conflict use to explain their world and themselves.