This is

This is CBS I on the world with John Bachelor

Here's John Bachelor

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 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 member of the FSB, a secret policeman.

This scene riveting is in a new book, The Russo-Ukrainerainian War, the Return of History, by Professor Seri 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 agree to 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, an

imperial disintegration, Soviet Russian Federation. Ukraine and

thanks, thanks for having me on the show.

Good evening to you. Good evening and thanks for having me on the show.

...