The two hinge moments of Ukraine’s post–Cold War history were two highly effective and genuinely inspirational displays of people power, both provoke… - Anna Reid

...a new round of horror was visited on Ukraine following the signing of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Red Army occupied the Polish-ruled western part of the country—the first time Russia had ever controlled this territory. Two years later, however, the Wehrmacht marched in anyway, and two years after that, the Red Army returned. Both armies deported or arrested the Lviv intelligentsia—a rich mix of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews—as they arrived and killed political prisoners as they departed.

“What does Ukraine look like?” In the allotted five minutes I tried to give an idea...it’s green and gently rolling, and dotted with medieval fortresses, romantically neglected baroque palaces and monasteries, and quiet, pretty towns and little cities, much like those of Austria or the Czech Republic. Kyiv itself is a grand Belle Époque metropolis with up-and-down cobbled streets and chestnut trees. There are funny little back alleys and courtyards full of coffee shops and art galleries, leafy parks with views over the sprawling river Dnipro, and an array of glorious churches, the grandest of them the 11th-century Saint Sophia Cathedral.

Here begins Ukraine’s great debate – still raw, still undecided: are Ukrainians Central Europeans, like the Poles, or a species of Russian? Poles used to call western Ukraine ‘Eastern Little Poland’; the Russian name for Ukraine was ‘Little Russia.'