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This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batch with Sarah Bloke, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, the author of the new book, the Russo-Ukrainian War, the return of history,

written between the winter of 22 and the winter of 23, the war, 500 days plus, unknown future.

We are discussing the roots of it because that will somehow be present in when there is an end of it.

Or at least a ceasefire. Professor Vladimir Putin becomes critical here because it's his authority that drives the tragedy.

He becomes president in May of 2000 with a constitution that empowers him, although it limits him to two terms.

Later on, of course, that will become something he can manipulate because the presidency in Russia, thanks to Boris Yeltsin

and Voussafe by Bill Clinton, is much more powerful than our understanding of checks and balances here in the United States.

That gives Putin the power both to play the friend of the U.S. during the war on terror and also move towards the assumption that he has the right to dictate who can join NATO, who can join EU, who can be Western regarding and who cannot.

You identify April of 2008 as an important summit for NATO and Bucharest. At that time, Georgia and Ukraine both wanted to join NATO. What happened?

What happened was split within the alliance. The United States at that time, led by President Judge W. Bush, was in favor of inviting Ukraine and Georgia, joining the alliance.

And part of the Western allies, in particular in particular Germany, opposed to this idea.

So what happened as the result of the summit was the worst outcome possible for Ukraine and Georgia.

They invited to summit Mr. Putin traveled to summit as well, trying to lobby the European members of alliance to say no to Ukraine and Georgia.

And the end alliance never reached an agreement. So there was a promise given to Ukraine and Georgia that one day they would become the member of alliance.

But there was no specifics on when that date would come. But there were quite a lot of specifics in Mr. Putin's thinking about the coalition within a few months after the Bucharest summit.

It starts war in Georgia in 2008, invading the territory and really, really the fact that annexing parts of Georgia and territory making, making Georgia unallegible to join an alliance because the country had a territorial, a territorial dispute.

The last part of the territory of the country was under the fact of occupation. And the war with Ukraine came six years later in 2014.

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