Alexander Query writes:

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many in the West, and in the Kremlin too, expected the Ukrainian state to crumble in weeks, if not days.

The government would flee, the state would be carved up – some lands absorbed by Russia, the rest perhaps being made into a Moscow-dominated puppet state. The war might continue, but it would be an insurgency in an occupied country, so the experts said.

They were wrong, and part of the reason they were wrong is that they had so little knowledge and understanding of Ukraine’s history and its long battle to shrug off the shackles of Russian domination.

Indeed, the Kremlin’s own denial of Ukrainian agency and statehood are as much the reasons for its failure to carry out regime change in Ukraine as its poor logistics and overly ambitious military plans.

At its heart, Ukrainians’ fierce resistance to Russian invasion was built from the strong nationalist movement in the country.

Nationalism, of course, carries many negative associations in Western democracies with fascism. But Ukraine’s nationalism is, first and foremost, an expression of the right to self-determination, not a far-right ideology, according to experts and researchers.

The present war is the latest stage of a long-running fight for freedom in Ukraine that can hardly be understood without a close look at the nationalist movements in the country throughout the 20th century, Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko told the Kyiv Independent.

“We can’t understand today’s resistance without (knowing about) the whole bunch of other resistances that existed in Ukraine,” he said. [Continue reading…]