Ukraine

What defines the Ukraine and where does it go from here? The Russian invasion has triggered fresh controversy over the country’s political and cultural autonomy. Karl Schlögel spent many years travelling the Ukraine and has recently been back there to take stock of the changes taking place.

Lvov, Odessa, Chernivtsi, Kiev, Kharkov, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk: once flourishing cities, centres of culture in their own right, ignored by the Western World for too long — a fact that encouraged Vladimir Putin’s expansionist policies. Seventy years after the Second World War, European cities are once again in danger of obliteration. Karl Schlögel’s edge-of-Europe urban portraits make it patently clear what is at stake not far from our doorstep. Combining a historian’s meticulousness with his customary journalistic flair, Schlögel reassesses the Ukraine.