Resources for Understanding the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict

NCW Libraries has chosen to pause its normal social media posting today (Friday, Feb. 25) as a show of support to the people of Ukraine and to allow the focus to stay on the current conflict in the embattled country.

To help you better understand the long history of conflict and national identity in that region of Eastern Europe, we have curated this list of resources in our library collection, as well as other trusted information sources.

Books

The Gates of Europe by Serhii Plokhy

Empires have waged global battles for supremacy on Ukrainian soil for centuries. Award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy examines Ukraine’s search for identity in this definitive look at the history, people and culture of this embattled nation.

In Wartime: Stories From Ukraine by Tim Judah

Boots-on-the-ground dispatches from the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine from reporter, author and political analyst Tim Judah

Ukraine’s Maidan, Russia’s War by Mychailo Wynnyckyj

In early 2014, sparked by an assault by their government on peaceful students, Ukrainians rose up against a Moscow-backed regime and established a new Ukrainian identity.

Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum

In 1929, Stalin launched his policy of agriculture collectivism, forcing millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. More than 3 million Ukrainians died as a result of the action.

The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder

A chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism after the end of the Cold War told by American author and historian Timothy Snyder

The man without a face: the unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen

Journalist Masha Gessen gives a chilling account of how a low-level KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency.

Documentaries on Kanopy

The unfolding Ukraine-Russia Crisis Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius explores a century of conflict as well as the history of ethnic divisions within Ukraine and Russia’s attitude toward former Soviet territory.

A Sniper’s War An award-winning look at the unseen side of escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

Breaking Point: the War for Democracy in Ukraine Documentary looks at people transformed by a democratic revolution.

Maidan: Uprising in Ukraine Acclaimed filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa chronicles the civil uprising that toppled the government of Ukraine President Victor Yankovich and has since developed into the current crisis between Russia and the West.