"When did Vladimir Putin decide to invade Ukraine, and why history matters"

Yaroslav Hrytsak (Ukrainian Catholic University)

Thursday 11 January 2024, 18:30h
Hörsaal des Instituts für Osteuropäische Geschichte

Registration is requested (nicht verfügbar = ausgebucht)

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To a large extent, the current Russian-Ukrainian war may be regarded as a war about the past: most arguments of Vladimir Putin for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine were of a historical character. There are, however, interpretations that Putin used these arguments as a smokescreen to cover very pragmatic considerations. To find out which interpretation is true, one has to identify when Putin made his decision to invade Ukraine. Using various testimonies and leaks, the presentation claims that the decisions were made gradually, and at each point history mattered albeit in different ways.

YAROSLAV HRYTSAK is a professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv) and director of the Institute for Historical Research, Lviv National University. He is founding editor of Ukraina Moderna and author of e.g. Prophet in His Native Land: Ivan Franko and His Community and Global History of Ukraine (2021). Hrytsak is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

The Austrian-Ukrainian Historians Commission is kindly supported by the Austrian Ministry of European and International Affairs. Organizer: Wolfgang Mueller

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