Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War
Taras KuzioThis book is the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the 2014 crisis, Russia's annexation of Crimea and Europe's de facto war between Russia and Ukraine. The book provides a historical and contemporary understanding behind President Vladimir Putin Russia's obsession with Ukraine and why Western opprobrium and sanctions have not deterred Russian military aggression.
The volume provides a wealth of detail about the inability of Russia, from the time of the Tsarist Empire, throughout the era of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and since the dissolution of the latter in 1991, to accept Ukraine as an independent country and Ukrainians as a people distinct and separate from Russians. The book highlights the sources of this lack of acceptance in aspects of Russian national identity. In the Soviet period, Russians principally identified themselves not with the Russian Soviet Federative Republic, but rather with the USSR as a whole. Attempts in the 1990s...