“To hell with the historical background”: why arguments about the past will not help end the war

Nikolay Mitrokhin

Vladimir Zelensky, in an interview with Piers Morgan, dismissed Putin’s arguments pulled from the depths of history - and he was right: they are worth nothing in negotiations. But if you throw “historical crap” into the trash, then on both sides. Ukrainian rhetoric about “Muscovites”, “Mokshas” and hereditary imperialism mirrors Russian theses about the Ukraine “invented by Lenin”. Nikolai Mitrokhin* shows how primitive historiosophy became a tool of hybrid war, and explains why, instead of cliches and background, it is worth focusing on the specific perpetrators of the war.

Last week, the President of Ukraine, in an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, made extremely unusual and, one might even say, epoch-making statements about his attitude towards Putin.

“I don’t need to waste time on historical questions, on the reasons why he started, on all this, it seems to me, crap that he brings up [in conversations] with Americans and others... About Peter I and so on... I don’t need that. Because I don't need all this historical crap to end this war and the diplomatic path, really...
I have read no less history books than Putin. And I learned a lot. I know more about his country than he knows about Ukraine. Simply because I had been to many cities in Russia and knew a lot of people there. “He has never been to Ukraine so many times and has only been to large cities.”

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“To hell with the historical background”: why arguments about the past will not help end the war

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