Hi, everyone and welcome to this latest episode of the Brexit and Beyond podcast from the UK in a changing Europe.

I'm Alan Menon and I'm delighted today to be joined by Mark Galiotti, who's an expert on modern Russia, an honorary professor at UCL, has his own must-listen podcast in Moscow's shadows and is.

And I thought this was a typo when I read it, the author of 24 books about Russia.

Never mind the quality, feel the width.

That's just insane.

24 books.

Anyway, your latest bookmark, welcome, by the way, was a short history of Russia.

And it's with that that I want to start, really, if that's okay.

What is the place of Ukraine within Russian folklore?

And is this idea that Putin seems wedded to that Ukraine should actually be part of Russia, widely held?

That's an interesting question about whether it's widely held. I mean, to start with the position of Ukraine, which is one of these questions where, you know, really to answer it, it would take the next four hours.

And I somehow think that your audience would be a little bit

out of patience by that stage. I mean, broadly speaking, the very deep roots of what we now think

of as Russia and the culture thereof was to a large extent, you know, way back in the early

medieval era, anchored around Kiev, or Kiev, which is, you know is still known as the mother of Russian cities,

even if at the moment Putin seems actively to be seeking to commit matricide.

Since then, that has still become part of the kind of, as you say, it's almost folk myths of Russia.

Now, in fact, Ukraine has been controlled by someone else, Poles, Lithuanians,

all kind of different people for more time than it's actually been within Russian's control.

Like all countries, especially all countries that don't have a very obvious mountain or

sea barriers around them, the borders have morphed and the identity has changed. So, I mean,

I think what we are now saying is absolutely a country which clearly has all kinds of cultural

...