The 2014 Russia–Ukraine conflict has transformed relations between Russia and the West into what many are calling a new cold war. The West has slowly come to understand that Russia’s annexations and interventions, interference in elections, cyber warfare, disinformation, assassinations in Europe and support for anti-EU populists emerge from Vladimir Putin’s belief that Russia is at war with the West. This book shows that the crisis has deep roots in Russia’s inability to come to terms with an independent Ukrainian state, Moscow’s view of the Orange and Euromaidan revolutions as Western conspiracies and, finally, its inability to understand that most Russian-speaking Ukrainians do not want to rejoin Russia. In Moscow’s eyes, Ukraine is central to rebuilding a sphere of influence within the former Soviet space and to re-establishing Russia as a great power. The book shows that the wide range of ‘hybrid’ tactics that Russia has deployed show continuity with the actions of the Soviet-era security services.

When Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych decided to postpone an EU Association Agreement, few would have predicted that it would lead to a prolonged conflict. What started as a peaceful demonstration of support for Ukraine’s pro-European course soon developed into a vicious confrontation dividing families, communities and the Ukrainian nation. The authors of this Edited Collection each present a facet of the intense and dangerous turmoil, and contribute to a deeper understanding of a crisis that now afflicts both European and global affairs.

Edited by Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska & Richard Sakwa

This book describes the author’s academic journey from an undergraduate in London to his current research on Ukraine and Belarus as a History professor in Alberta, Canada. It highlights the dramatic changes of the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods, his travel stories, experiences, and the Stalinist legacy in both countries. It includes focus on his visits to Chernobyl and the contaminated zone, as well as a summer working with indigenous groups in eastern Siberia. Visiting Belarus more than 25 times since the 1990s, he was banned for seven years before the visa rules were relaxed in 2017. In the case of Ukraine, it chronicles a transition from a total outsider to one of the best-known scholars in Ukrainian studies, commenting on aspects of the coalescence of scholarship and politics, and the increasing role of social media and the Diaspora in the analysis of crucial events such as the Maidan uprising and its aftermath.

This is the first book to analyse the Russian-Ukrainian war considering the role played by the Dnipropetrovsk region as the country’s forpost (outpost) in Russia’s war against Ukraine. In the Soviet Union, Dnipropetrovsk was a closed city due to its large military industrial complex, and it was the world’s biggest producer of nuclear missiles. This book analyses how a city that was once the pride of Soviet power became a bastion of Ukrainian patriotism in the face of Russian military aggression in 2014 and thereafter. Led by Jewish-Ukrainian Russian speakers, the city of Dnipro and the region of Dnipropetrovsk prevented the spread of the Kremlin’s so-called ‘New Russia’ project beyond the Donbas into the heart of Ukraine. This book challenges disinformation and stereotypes which portray Ukraine as a regionally divided country with the military conflict as a ‘civil war’ between Russian and Ukrainian speakers.

Since the Russian annexation of Crimea, Eastern Europe has faced a migration crisis. Several million Ukrainians are internally displaced or have fled the country and face an uncertain future. At the same time, Western-imposed sanctions and the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union have affected Russia’s migration policies. These processes could change the social landscape of the region for many years to come. The aim of this collection is to shed light on the forgotten migrant crisis at the EU’s doorstep and make sense of the various migration processes in and out of Ukraine and Russia. The book is divided into two sections. The first section deals with migration processes that have taken place within Ukraine or have involved Ukrainian citizens’ migration out of the country, excluding Russia. The second section discusses Russia’s response to the inflow of migrants from Ukraine, its changing policies and their effect on migrants, as well as other processes related to the phenomenon over the course of the Ukraine crisis.

Through a series of articles written between 2013 and 2017, this book examines Ukraine during its period of conflict – from the protests and uprising of Euromaidan, to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Ukraine’s two eastern provinces Donetsk and Luhansk. It also looks at Ukraine’s response to Russian incursions in the form of Decommunisation – the removal of Lenin statues, Communist symbols, and the imposition of the so-called Memory Laws of the spring of 2015. The book places these events in the context of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine’s geostrategic location between Russia and the European Union. It seeks to provide answers to questions that are too often mired in propaganda and invective and to assess whether the road Ukraine has taken is likely to end in success or failure.

How can you counteract an information war? Hromadske Radio, Public Radio Ukraine, decided to provide accurate and objective information to audiences – free of state and corporate censorship and any kind of manipulation. This book, by Marta Dyczok, brings together a series of English language reports on the Ukraine crisis first broadcast on Hromadske Radio between 3 February 2014 and 7 August 2015. Collected and transcribed here, they offer a kaleidoscopic chronicle of events in Ukraine. Bookending the reports, purpose written introduction and conclusion sections contextualize the independent radio project within the larger picture of Ukraine’s media and political developments – both before the Euromaidan and in its dramatic aftermath.