Keynote Announcement

The Russo-Ukrainian War: Did the History Make Its Turn?
Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 and the start of the largest European conflict since the end of World War II came as a shock to the world at large. Putin’s de facto declaration of war on Ukraine, delivered in conjunction with his official recognition of the independence of the puppet states created by Russia in eastern Ukraine, was dubbed a history lecture, and few observers outside Russia could make sense of it. How important have been the misuse and abuse of history in the perpetration and justification of this war, and what are the actual historical causes of the conflict? Why did Putin start the war - and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military; the West has united, while Russia found it difficult to find allies on the international arena. The lecture will provide answers to these and other related questions by tracing the origins of the newest European war and explaining the reasons for the return of the Cold War to the very same part of the world where it ended thirty years earlier. The presentation will be based on Plokhii’s book, The Russo-Ukrainian War: A Return of History, released in the US in May 2023.

Serhii Plokhii
ist Professor für ukrainische Geschichte und Direktor des Ukraine-Forschungsinstituts an der Harvard Universität. Sein Interesse gilt der intellektuellen, kulturellen und internationalen Geschichte Osteuropas mit Schwerpunkt auf der Ukraine. Er ist u.a. Autor von Der Krieg gegen die Ukraine. Russlands Angriff und die Folgen für die Welt (Hamburg 2023), Das Tor Europas: Die Geschichte der Ukraine (Hamburg 2022), Die Frontlinie: Warum die Ukraine zum Schauplatz eines neuen Ost-West-Konflikts wurde (Hamburg 2022), The Last Empire. The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York 2014) und Yalta. The Price of Peace. (New York 2010).