4: 4. The 2014 Kremlin Decision and Ukrainian Unity Against Russian Imperialism. Serhii Plokhy (Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University) discusses the all-night Kremlin meeting on February 23–24, 2014, where Vladimir Putin and his state security

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🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

4. The 2014 Kremlin Decision and Ukrainian Unity Against Russian Imperialism. Serhii Plokhy (Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University) discusses the all-night Kremlin meeting on February 23–24, 2014, where Vladimir Putin and his state security chiefs unilaterally decided to annex Crimea and fragment Ukraine. This scene exemplifies modern Russia's nature as a dictatorship, where critical decisions are made by one man—Putin, a former FSB chekist—without democratic oversight. Putin's dictatorial powers are legally based on the super-presidential constitution approved in 1993, following Boris Yeltsin's actions against the parliament. Previously, Putin built credibility by being brutal during the conquest of Chechnya in 1999. A longstanding stereotype divided Ukraine between westward (often Roman Catholic/cosmopolitan) and eastward (Orthodox/Russian-speaking) orientations. While Russia exploited these existing linguistic, cultural, and religious tensions in 2014 to facilitate the seizure of Crimea and initiate hybrid warfare in Donbas, the ultimate effect of the 2014 aggression was the creation of a much more unified Ukrainian society than had ever existed before. Moscow's failure to recognize this post-2014 change was a fundamental miscalculation when invading in 2022.

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0:00.0	I'm John Batchew with Professor Serhi Ploki, Ukrainian professor of history at Harvard University.
0:10.0	His new book is the Russo-Ukrainian War, The Return of History.
0:13.0	It is the spring of 2021, the summer of 2021, Russia continues to run troops up to the Ukrainian border and then pull back,
0:24.4	but leaves its equipment in place. There's talk back and forth between now President Biden
0:30.3	and Vladimir Putin. They meet in Geneva. There's talks by the director of the Central
0:36.5	Intelligence Agency in Moscow,
0:39.2	warning Putin not to do this, and Putin talking about his demands.
0:45.0	There's taunting going on in Ukraine all that spring, summer, and fall of 2021.
0:53.2	But Mr. Biden makes it clear again and again,
0:55.8	the professor reporting that no U.S. troops are going to Ukraine,
0:59.7	no weapons are going to Ukraine.
1:02.1	Professor, this is a colossal misjudgment of Putin.
1:05.8	Was it purposeful?
1:07.0	Did it serve NATO's purpose to pretend that Putin wasn't a deceiver and a predator?
1:11.6	The US intelligence did a fantastic job, really reporting to Washington on the mood in the Kremlin,
1:25.6	on the plans for the war, even predicting, if not the mood in the Kremlin, on the plans for the war, even predicting if not the day and the
1:31.7	hour, then at least the week when the war would start. And Mr. Biden's administration
1:40.5	in the White House made an unprecedented move of releasing almost in real time the
1:49.0	intelligence information on those things that they were getting.
1:53.0	So the hope was that they would shame Putin into not doing that, into not attacking,
2:00.0	almost to trick him into saying that, okay, you told
2:03.7	that I would attack and I would prove you wrong. My understanding that was at least part of the
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