HAS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SWITCHED SIDES TO KYIV? 5/8: The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History. by Serhii Plokhy (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
1921 UKRAINE
https://www.amazon.com/Russo-Ukrainian-War-Return-History/dp/1324051191
Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war―and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military; the West has united, while Russia grows increasingly isolated.
Serhii Plokhy, a leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, offers a definitive account of this conflict, its origins, course, and the already apparent and possible future consequences. Though the current war began eight years before the all-out assault―on February 27, 2014, when Russian armed forces seized the building of the Crimean parliament―the roots of this conflict can be traced back even earlier, to post-Soviet tensions and imperial collapse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a broad historical context and an examination of Ukraine and Russia’s ideas and cultures, as well as domestic and international politics, Plokhy reveals that while this new Cold War was not inevitable, it was predictable.
Ukraine, Plokhy argues, has remained central to Russia’s idea of itself even as Ukrainians have followed a radically different path. In a new international environment defined by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the disintegration of the post–Cold War international order, and a resurgence of populist nationalism, Ukraine is now more than ever the most volatile fault line between authoritarianism and democratic Europe.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor. Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:12.4 | This is CBS, I on the World. I'm John Batchelor, Ukraine conflict. It is February 23rd, 24th, 2014 at the Kremlin. A meeting that lasts all night |
| 0:25.4 | involves the heads of state security, the GRU, the SVR, the SVR, the FSB, plus the National |
| 0:32.2 | Security Council, plus Vladimir Putin. And the decision that night is to annex and tear apart Ukraine. |
| 0:40.9 | This scene is representative of the decisions made at the Kremlin without any permission of anyone |
| 0:49.9 | outside, like a democracy or a parliament or representatives of government or people of the world, |
| 0:57.2 | made unilaterally by Vladimir Putin and his state security chiefs, remembering always that |
| 1:03.5 | Vladimir Putin's training is that of a Czechist, a member of the FSB, a secret policeman. |
| 1:15.1 | This scene riveting is in a new book, |
| 1:21.4 | The Russo-Ukrainian War, The Return of History, by Professor Serhi Ploki. He is a professor of Ukrainian history and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. |
| 1:26.9 | This book written between March of 2022, the month after the invasion, and February of |
| 1:34.6 | 2023, the war is ongoing. |
| 1:36.8 | It's more than 500 days, but the roots of it are critical to understand if we have the |
| 1:42.3 | future. |
| 1:42.7 | The professor reminds us that an historian is the worst |
| 1:45.9 | possible interpreter of current events except for everyone else. Professor, I greet you. Thank you very |
| 1:52.7 | much. What in that meeting illustrates a theme that runs through your book? This is a combination |
| 1:59.8 | events that are in contest, a war of |
| 2:03.0 | national liberation, Ukraine, and imperial disintegration, Soviet Russian Federation. Good evening to you. |
| 2:11.5 | Good evening, and thanks for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to be back. |
| 2:22.1 | What happened on the night of February 23rd, 2014, |
| 2:28.0 | certainly demonstrates very clearly that Russia today, |
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