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Hello, David here with a new series of explainers from the briefing room.

In today's podcast, we look at Vladimir Putin's motivation for his war in Ukraine.

To trace the evolution of his attitude towards Ukraine, I spoke to Vittali Schifchenko,

who's Russia editor for BBC monitoring and co-presenter

of the BBC's Ukraine cast. Vitao Shevchenko, what do we know about how Vladimir Putin first

began to think about Ukraine? I think there never was a time when he wasn't thinking about Ukraine.

Because for Vladimir Putin, and I have to say for a significant part of the Russian society,

it doesn't seem as though they have genuinely accepted Ukraine as a sovereign state that is free to make its own sovereign

decisions. So what Vladimir Putin is doing now, I tend to see it as a manifestation of a

wider problem that is rooted in distant past.

Centuries of Russian rule in Ukraine.

Ukraine or parts of Ukraine used to be part of the Russian Empire.

To come back to Vladimir Putin specifically, time and again, for years,

he referred to Russians and Ukrainians as one people. Immediately before the

start of his so-called special military reparation, he wrote an article about the historical

unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. The implication being that Ukraine doesn't really have its own

identity, language, history, culture, it's part of Russia. And thinking back to my own experience

growing up in the Soviet Union, there was this feeling of Russia being the bigger brother. That's a phrase that

was mentioned a lot. And Ukraine and the other Soviet socialist republics were junior brothers. So there

was a slightly condescending attitude. And you lived in Ukraine? I did, yes, for most of my life.

And that's why when Vladimir Putin started

...