Meaningful and lasting reconciliation would require difficult compromises on all sides – be it by the residents of “big Ukraine” or by the residents of the non-government controlled Donbas. Since at present “big Ukraine” can only control its own choices, it is up to “big Ukraine” to decide whether to start an open but difficult dialogue that would break taboos about what constitutes a legitimate opinion or position to express. Creating public space for such a dialogue is something Ukraine has the power to do in the conditions of the continued Russian aggression and Russia’s support for the anti-Kyiv insurgency in Donbas. Inter-Ukraine dialogue by itself is not going to end Russian involvement in the Donbas conflict, but it can contribute towards reconciliation between “pro-Maidan” and...

After World War II, Kyiv’s large Jewish minority was quite publically marginalized by the Ukrainian leadership’s silence on Moscow’s cue. The result was a newly empowered Ukrainian majority some two years before the murder of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee leader, Solomon Mikhoels, the date usually cited as the beginning of the Kremlin’s official anti-Semitism campaign. New research shows that,

In a recent meeting with the new French president Emmanuel Macron, the Russian president Vladimir Putin referred to Anna Yaroslavna (also known as Anna of Kyiv) as "Russian Anne," in an attempt to point to both a long-standing connection between Russia and France, and to Russia's importance for French history. Playing on the ambiguity in the use of the adjective "Russian" – a use that removes the difference between the Rusian state – Kyivan Rus' (hence the use of one "s" in this adjective), the largest kingdom in Medieval Europe, – and the modern Russian state that grew out of Muscovy – the Duchy of Moscow. (In the Russian language, the difference is obvious: "russkiy" points to Kyivan Rus', while "rossiyskiy" points to "Rossiya," the modern Russia.) One, likely intended, consequence was..

One evening, in August 2014, Veronika was collecting her son from kindergarten in a town near Donetsk, just like every other day. A ceasefire had been promised, she thought, and there had been no audible shelling for one or two weeks, then. She bundled her son and the next-door neighbour’s daughter onto her moped and set off home. For some reason, her son was nervous, and wanted them to stop awhile. But all was quiet. She pointed out to him that people were out in the streets, sunbathing on the beach, relaxing. All was fine; all was calm. They stood for three minutes, and suddenly the sky tore itself apart.