In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, a then very young American political sciences declared that history was over.

It had come to an end.

He wrote a book with the same title just a couple of years later.

The Cold War had finished, the USSR had collapsed,

liberal democracy and market capitalism reigned supreme, and it wasn't going to change.

And yet in the last few years, the script has moved quite significantly. History, some say,

has come back. Emblematic of that has been the conflict between Russia and Ukraine

over the last three years, although of course you can date that all the way back to 2014.

Today's guest is going to offer a deep history of Russia, Ukraine, that conflict, where it comes

from and where it sits within the broader sweep of collapsing

empires. He's also got a new book out about nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, the nuclear age.

So we're going to talk about Russia, Ukraine, but also the possibility of proliferation.

Is an increasingly multipolar world

where history has indeed come back,

also a world where more and more countries

have nuclear weapons.

Sergei Plokky, welcome to downstream.

It's a pleasure.

Very happy to have you on.

We're talking about your most recent book,

The Nuclear Age, but also Russia, Ukraine. You've been one of the most similar voices in that conflict. You yourself are from

what is now Ukraine, but you were born in the USSR. Yes. Whereabouts are you from originally?

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