Sunday Reading: The Ukraine Crisis
The New Yorker, Sunday, Feb 6, 2022
Vladimir Putin is of the belief that Russia is the victim of a triumphal West that exploited its advantages following the end of the Cold War. He is making his arguments with aggression—and with threats of even more aggression. By invading and occupying Crimea, in 2014, and now by stationing more than a hundred thousand troops on the Ukrainian border, he is intimidating Ukraine and trying to reassert Russian power in Europe. It’s entirely unclear what will happen in the coming weeks. One can hope that diplomacy will prevail, but there’s certainly no guarantee.
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In the midst of these tensions, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces on Ukraine and the changing nature of its relationship with Russia. In a profile of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, from 2019, Joshua Yaffa, who is based in Moscow, writes about the rise of the unlikely politician, a former comedian who, as his country’s leader, found himself at the center of Donald Trump’s first impeachment and now must grapple with a geopolitical crisis. In “The Orange and the Blue,” from 2010, Keith Gessen reports on the period after an earlier Ukrainian drive for independence. In “The Novel That Predicts Russia’s Invasion of Crimea,” Michael Idov explores a satirical tale, published more than forty years ago, by Vassily Aksyonov. In “How Putin Plays with the Law,” Masha Lipman, a Russian political analyst, examines Putin’s annexation of Crimea. Finally, Masha Gessen reports from Kyiv, last week, as ordinary people in the Ukrainian capital ruefully discuss preparing for something that cannot be prepared for: potential invasion.
—David Remnick
