Ukraine not 'the' Ukraine

This Element is a historical tour of Ukraine from the medieval Kyivan prince Volodymyr the Great through to Ukraine's twenty-first-century rock star president Volodymyr Zelensky. It presents Ukraine as an actor, not a pawn, in international history. And it focuses on people. In the past, historians wrote about Ukraine from a colonial perspective that portrayed it as a region, not its own entity. This shaped the way people thought about Ukraine and created mental maps where it was just part ...