Russia must lose in the war against Ukraine – only then can security be restored not only for a particular region but for the entire world, said a Ukrainian and American historian and a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, Serhii Plokhy (Serhii Plokhii), in an interview with Voice of America.
“Russia is essentially frozen in this imperial or post-imperial nineteenth-century way of thinking, where everything is determined by territorial control, not of people, not by creating some product within the country, but by territorial annexations. And the only way to remove this infection for the whole world, not just for our region, is to cut it out. Russia must lose this war,” Plokhy said.
The historian admitted that he believed in the disadvantages of war for Russia. “But essentially, I made, perhaps, the biggest sin for a historian because somehow I did not give enough weight to history itself. History is about this war being a war of the collapse of the empire,” Plokhy said.
Putin and his conception of history, Ukraine, are an important part and cause of this war, continued the historian. “But Putin only to a certain extent shapes Russian society, narratives, and traditions. He is a product of these traditions. Hence, there is support among Russian society. So, we are dealing not only with one person who has read too much bad history, but with a society that has lived and continues to live in this shell created by the imperial history of the nineteenth century,” Plokhy said.
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