This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor. Here's John Batchelor.

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

involves the heads of state security, the GRU, the SVR, the SVR, the FSB, plus the National

Security Council, plus Vladimir Putin. And the decision that night is to annex and tear apart Ukraine.

This scene is representative of the decisions made at the Kremlin without any permission of anyone

outside, like a democracy or a parliament or representatives of government or people of the world,

made unilaterally by Vladimir Putin and his state security chiefs, remembering always that

Vladimir Putin's training is that of a Czechist, a member of the FSB, a secret policeman.

This scene riveting is in a new book,

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.

This book written between March of 2022, the month after the invasion, and February of

2023, the war is ongoing.

It's more than 500 days, but the roots of it are critical to understand if we have the

future.

The professor reminds us that an historian is the worst

possible interpreter of current events except for everyone else. Professor, I greet you. Thank you very

much. What in that meeting illustrates a theme that runs through your book? This is a combination

events that are in contest, a war of

national liberation, Ukraine, and imperial disintegration, Soviet Russian Federation. Good evening to you.

Good evening, and thanks for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to be back.

What happened on the night of February 23rd, 2014,

certainly demonstrates very clearly that Russia today,

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