“Ukraine has never succeeded, yet it has never failed either,” James Sherr OBE, senior fellow of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute (EFPI) at the ICDS presented his recent report “Nothing New Under the Sun? Continuity and Change in Russian Policy Towards Ukraine” on 9 September 2020.
For Russia, the axiom ‘Ukraine will never be able to stand by itself’ has been the basis of policy for 300 years. The struggle to control history is a struggle to control others. In this arena, Ukraine has been a central battleground. The only ‘golden mean’ that Russia will accept is one that makes it the arbiter of what Ukraine’s independence means and how it is to be pursued.
The presentation was followed by a discussion moderated by Kristi Raik (director of EFPI) and joined by Duncan Allan (associate fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House; formerly British Embassy Moscow and Kyiv, Foreign & Commonwealth Office) and Dr Alexander Bogomolov (director, Krymski Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine).