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Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war―and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military; the West has united, while Russia grows isolated.

Serhii Plokhy, leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, traces this conflict to post-Soviet tensions. Providing a broad historial context and an examination of Ukraine and Russia’s ideas and cultures, as well as domestic and international politics, Plokhy reveals that while this new Cold War was not inevitable, it was predictable. Ukraine, Plokhy argues, has remained central to Russia’s idea of itself even as Ukrainians have followed a radically different path. It is now more than ever the most volatile fault line between authoritarianism and democratic Europe as a new division of the world emerges around the economic superpowers of the United States and China.

Such an auspicious beginning. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum was supposed to give Ukraine a security guarantee from the West for handing over the nuclear weapons on their soil. If Russia was ever to attack them, the West would be there. Didn’t quite work out that way.

I think I know why Putin and Trump get along so well. They both think that, just because they say something, it’s true. Putin seems to be under the assumption that Ukraine is part of Russia just because it was at one point. So I guess France should hand over Normandy to England.

Why, exactly, did Putin invade Ukraine? While many believe it was his desire to rebuild the USSR, Plokhy gives another reason. Most Russians, including Putin apparently, believe that their nation originated in Kyiv, the center of what was known as Kyivan Rus, and encompassed parts of what are now Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The fact that that particular entity was destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century doesn’t seem to mean a great deal in Putin’s delusional mind.

It was awful, reliving Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, remembering Russia’s atrocities and seeing them played out again on the pages of the book. I often had to stop, I was so infuriated, that Putin could, and still is, getting away with murder. Literally.

It’s amazing how much Russia has tried to dominate Ukraine over the last century and more. The bizarre thinking of that country’s leaders is hard to fathom.