On January 15, CERES hosted hosted a compelling book talk featuring journalist Lucian Kim at the Mortara Center.
About the Book:
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a bloody escalation of a conflict that had begun eight years earlier. What drove Vladimir Putin to launch Europe’s largest land war since World War II?
Lucian Kim—an on-the-ground reporter in the region for decades—offers a gripping, definitive account of Russia’s path to war, from Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Maidan uprising right up to the full-scale invasion. He examines the Kremlin’s motives, tracing Putin’s transformation from a seemingly pragmatic leader into an embittered tyrant who saw it as his historical mission to reconquer Ukraine. Kim places the war in the broader context of the Soviet Union’s collapse, arguing that it represents a clash between those who reject the Soviet past—like Volodymyr Zelensky and Alexei Navalny—and those who still identify with it. He debunks the Kremlin narrative that the West instigated the conflict, and he instead identifies the root causes of the war in the legacy of Russian imperialism and Putin’s dictatorial rule. At the same time, Kim is critical of the West’s empty promises to Ukraine, which made the country vulnerable to a revanchist Russia.
About the Author:
Lucian Kim has reported on Ukraine and Russia since Vladimir Putin’s first term in office. Based in Moscow and Berlin for more than twenty years, he covered central and eastern Europe as a correspondent for National Public Radio, Bloomberg News, and the Christian Science Monitor. He was the recipient of a Wilson Center Fellowship in Washington, DC, where he began writing this book.
This event was sponsored by the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) at Georgetown University and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.