Our first hint that the Russo-Ukrainian War may have an ancient and complicated backstory appears with the discovery that the first Russian state, indeed, the first Ukrainian state, was not founded in modern day Russia. It was founded in Kiev in the ninth century. Ever since, the two countries, which are sometimes the same country, have been locked in a seemingly endless love-hate relationship. Where Zelensky wants Ukrainian independence, Soviet stalwarts Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, both Ukrainian, considered such thinking treasonous.
But that ancient and complicated history goes much deeper than a centuries-old dysfunctional relationship. Unlike the linear histories of Western nations, the histories of Russia and Ukraine are cyclical, where, to paraphrase novelist Leon Uris, there is no future, only the past repeating itself. This isn’t the sort of past you want to repeat: conquest, occupation, enslavement, conquest again, state-engineered famines, genocide, collectivization, purges, fascism, genocide again, Communism, nuclear disaster — these countries have experienced them all.
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