Ukraine’s Unnamed War: Before the Russian Invasion of 2022
About the Book Ukraine’s Unnamed War: Before the Russian Invasion of 2022:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has its roots in the events of 2013–2014. Russia cynically termed the seditionist conflict in Crimea and Eastern Donbas a ‘civil war’ in order to claim non-involvement. This flies in the face of evidence, but the authors argue that the social science literature on civil wars can be used help understand why no political solution was found between 2015 and 2022. The book explains how Russia, after seizing Crimea, was reacting to events it could not control and sent troops only to areas of Ukraine where it knew it would face little resistance (Eastern Donbas). Kremlin decisionmakers misunderstood the attachment of the Russian-speaking population to the Ukrainian state and also failed to anticipate that their intervention would transform Ukraine into a more cohesively ‘Ukrainian’ polity. Drawing on Ukrainian documentary sources, this concise book explains these important developments to a non-specialist readership.
About the Author:
Dr. Jesse Driscoll (SFS/SSP ’01) is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Faculty Chair of the Global Leadership Institute at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California San Diego. He is the author of Warlords and Coalition Politics in Post-Soviet States (Cambridge, 2015) and Doing Global Fieldwork (Columbia, 2021).
We hope to see you there! Please show up on time to ensure you get a seat! The CCAS Boardroom is ICC 141.
This event is for GU students, faculty/staff, and alumni.
RSVP here.
This event is co-sponsored by Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) and the Security Studies Program (SSP).
CERES would like to thank the Carnegie Corporation of New York for generous support of our programming.