Hello and welcome to the explanation from the BBC World Service.

This is where we press polls on the busy 24-hour news cycle

and dig a bit deeper behind the headlines.

Today the West Bank's nightmare started coming true.

Protest is trying to break in there, using bamboo poles to smash vehicles.

It's a city where mothers carry guns along with their groceries.

The spaces that people can run to for safety are shrinking every day here.

Hello, I'm Claire Greene and with the help of my colleagues around the world

I'll be trying to get a better understanding of the stories that matter to all of us.

Today, Russia and Ukraine, what has buoyed them together and blown them apart.

As a correspondent with the BBC for over 30 years, Kevin Connelly reported from all over the world, including Eastern Europe.

Russia has, of course, deep cultural, economic and political ties with Ukraine.

So, Kevin, where should we start to explore the relationship between the two countries?

All of this starts off with a political entity called the Kievan Rus.

Now, that is a huge stretch of land in the Middle Ages created by traders

coming down from the Baltic Sea in the North to the Black Sea in the South.

They create this huge imperial area which includes the territories, which are modern Russia, modern Belarus and modern Ukraine.

There are no nation states and there's no concept of a nation state at this point.

But when Russians like Vadya Miputin look back into history, they see this common route.

By the end of the 18th century, borders in Eastern Europe were dramatically reconfigured.

The partitions of Poland, which brought three separate divisions of the country,

culminated in Russia incorporating large stretches of the territory and increasing its imperial might.

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