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The book analyses the Ukraine crisis through five perspectives. The first is how Western historians continue to include Ukrainians within an imperial history of ‘Russia’ which denies Ukrainians a separate history. The second perspective is to counter the common narrative of Crimea as ‘always’ having been ‘Russian’ which denies that Tatars are the indigenous people of Crimea – not Russians. The third perspective focuses on academic orientalist approaches to writing about Ukraine and the Russian-Ukrainian war. The fourth perspective downplays Russian nationalism (imperialism) in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and completely ignores the revival of Tsarist and White émigré Russian nationalism that denies the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Meanwhile, academic orientalism exaggerates the influence of Ukrainian nationalism in post-Euromaidan Ukraine. The fifth perspective counters the claim of Putinversteher (Putin-Understander) scholars of a ‘civil war’ taking place in Ukraine through extensive evidence of Russian military aggression and imperialism.
Taras Kuzio is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Foreign Policy Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington.
