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| Ukrainian National Identity Was Forged by Putin |
March 04, 2022 |
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As Russian President Vladamir Putin ordered Russian troops to the border with Ukraine, he sought to reframe the way the world sees Ukraine. Instead of separate and unique, Putin engaged in what Dr.Oxana Shevnel describes as retroactive nationalism. Putin’s speech on February 21st before the invasion began betrayed his ambitions – his references to a common Christian lineage tracing back to 1,000 years – underscored his empire-building ambitions. To Shevnel his quest will not stop with Ukraine. An expert in the geopolitical struggles of Eurasia’s post-Soviet countries she has closely followed the complicated forces influencing the political developments in Ukraine. In this opening segment, she shares how the country has seen several presidents try and fail to develop a national identity bridging divides that have existed for many years. That is until now. She credits Mr. Putin for accelerating a sense of Ukrainian national identity and aspirations to join the West. Pointing out that not long ago the country was split on whether it sought to look East to Russia or West to the European Union. However, things changed in 2014. The time she marks as the beginning of the Ukrainian Russian war and she describes how the soft power of the Orthodox Church in Moscow aligned itself with Putin’s war ambitions. Shevnel describes the religious politics and dynamics in the predominantly Orthodox nation that is fighting to survive as heavy bombardment and Russian and Belarus forces breach the country from the North, West, and East.
Dr. Oxana Shevel, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at Tufts University, Boston. She is an expert in post-Communist region surrounding Russia, and issues such as nation- and state-building, the politics of citizenship and migration, memory and religious politics, and challenges to democratization in the post-Soviet region. She is the author of Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Dr. Shevel is also President of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies. |
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