FACULTY FORUM
A history of Russian aggression in Ukraine by DR. AMBER N. NICKELL FHSU ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
I
n the late hours of the evening of February 24, 2022, news of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine appeared on American television sets and Twitter feeds. The Russian military build-up along Ukraine’s eastern and northern borders had dominated international news for well over a month, as pundits, politicians, and historians alike tried to make sense of Putin’s military peacocking. Would he launch a full-scale invasion, or was this just another of the Kremlin’s military drills, meant to remind the West of Russia’s hard power? On the evening of the 24th, I received an answer earlier than most. Friends and colleagues from
throughout Ukraine sent me frantic messages about explosions and gunfire. First from Kharkiv, then steadily from almost every major city on Ukraine’s eastern and northern borders. In the days that followed, messages, videos, and pictures from the south and west poured in. These messages continue today, as my Ukrainian colleagues and friends document atrocities and beg for help. Violent war crimes – bombings of schools, hospitals, and civilian structures; mass murder; rapes of women, girls, and young boys – have become the norm. From a historical perspective, the Kremlin’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of an independent and sovereign Ukraine is neither a radically new nor an entirely unanticipated ROAR
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development. After all, Putin started the current war in 2014, with the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea. He has backed extremely violent separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk since. The Kremlin’s contemporary imperialism, which some attribute to the Soviet Union’s legacy, is actually rooted in centuries of Russian imperialism in Ukraine and a historical legacy of extremely violent Russian attempts at eradicating the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian culture. This complex history has been the topic of several popular books, including the works of Serhii Plokhii, Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Anne Applebaum (to name a few).
SPRING/SUMMER 2022
