Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States

As they meticulously trace developments in Russia and Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Popova and Shevel point out that the current war was not preordained. In the early 1990s, both countries followed parallel tracks as they struggled to overcome dysfunctional economies and social and political chaos. Their decisive disentanglement followed later as Ukraine got firmly on the path to democracy and the West while Russia moved toward autocracy and “re-imperialization.” Still, there were important forks in the road, such as when Ukraine’s democratic development faltered during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych in the early 2010s. If Ukraine had taken an autocratic path, it could have become a willing Russian vassal, and the war would have been avoided. The book minimizes the role of the West in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and it pays little attention to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s growing distrust of the West, which long predated the war and made Ukraine’s pivot westward unacceptable to him. The authors dismiss Russia’s security concerns as “paranoia” and criticize the West for being too soft on Russia instead of opting in the first decade of the twenty-first century for a policy of containment and punishment.