On 24 February, Russia invaded Ukraine, turning an eight-year conflict that started with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, into a full-scale war. This public conversation with Serhii Plokhii and Timothy Snyder considered where things stand and what’s at stake.
Serhii Plokhii is Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. A leading authority on Eastern Europe and Russia, he has published extensively on the international history of Cold War. His books have won numerous awards, including the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best English-language book on the international relations for The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (2014), Taras Shevchenko National Prize (Ukraine) for The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (2015), and the Ballie Gifford Prize and Pushkin House Book Prize, UK for Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, (2018). His latest book, Atoms and Ashes: From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima, is forthcoming in May 2022.
Timothy Snyder is Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and IWM Permanent Fellow. His historical work concerns central and eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He has also written on U.S. history, international relations, health care, digital politics, and political thought. His fifteen books, which include Bloodlands and Black Earth, have been translated into more than forty languages and have received a similar number of awards. He holds state orders and honorary doctorates and has appeared in documentaries, on network television, and in major films. His books have inspired posters, sculpture, punk rock, rap, film, theater, and opera. His words are quoted in political demonstrations around the world. He is finishing a philosophical book about freedom.