In 'Putin's Revenge,' Lucian Kim traces the lead-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine

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🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

For more than 20 years, Lucian Kim covered Russia and Ukraine as a journalist. Now, the former NPR reporter is out with a new book that aims to explain the confluence of personal and geopolitical motivations that led to Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Putin's Revenge identifies key moments in the decades leading up to the invasion, including the 2004 Orange Revolution, George W. Bush's support of NATO membership for Ukraine, and Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea. In today's episode, Kim talks with Here & Now's Robin Young about several turning points in the conflict, the evolution of Putin's position towards the West and Ukraine, and why Kim was initially drawn to cover Russia as a story of a collapsed empire.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Luzin Kim was formerly NPR's
0:07.1	international correspondent based in Moscow, and he's got an expansive new book out titled
0:11.9	Putin's Revenge Why Russia Invaded Ukraine. It's a look back at the root causes of the war
0:18.2	and everything that's led up to where we are now. And what I didn't expect
0:23.2	in this interview between Kim and here and now as Robin Young was the outsized presence of President
0:29.0	George W. Bush, the U.S. president who Kim says had the biggest influence on the ongoing
0:34.8	conflict in Ukraine. He explains why after the break.
0:39.0	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:43.8	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods.
0:50.4	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
0:58.0	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:03.4	Why did Putin invade Ukraine?
1:05.9	That's the simple question at the heart of a deep new book from former NPR Moscow correspondent Lucien Kim. And a couple
1:12.3	a hundred pages later, we have a pretty robust answer. Yes, the root cause was a legacy of Russian
1:18.1	imperialism, which Ukraine, the breadb basket, played a key role in. We know Vladimir Putin,
1:23.7	the former KGB agent, wanted to resurrect the collapsed Soviet Union. But for Putin,
1:29.3	it was also personal. The name of the book is Putin's revenge why Russia invaded Ukraine.
1:34.9	It begins with Ukraine's 2004 popular uprising, the Orange Revolution, in which Ukrainians
1:41.1	installed their candidate, Viktor Yushenko, as president, even after Putin
1:45.3	rigged the election, and ends with an increasingly isolated Putin during COVID.
1:50.0	And as Lucian writes, a confluence of factors that led to his unprovoked, full-out war.
1:56.0	So now the bloody consequences on both sides are stalled like some grim old master's mural waiting for a
	...

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