There is fake history as well as fake news....
We are very fortunate to have the real picture of what has been happening in Ukraine set out for us in Richard Sakwa’s erudite and very well-informed Frontline Ukraine. The story – as told by the mainstream media, in the USA, the UK and much of the EU – is that the crisis was the outcome of growing tension between Moscow and Kiev....Putin, a former KGB officer unwilling and unable (it is said) to escape from the secretive and authoritarian mindset typical of that organisation, has embarked on an attempt to recreate something of the old Soviet bloc, replacing Communist ideology with Greater Russian chauvinism....Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, meticulously deconstructs this narrative. He produces a very different story, backed by copious documentation and mastery of a wide range of primary and secondary sources. His work, informed by decades of experience formed by teaching, researching, and writing, displays an understanding of the complexities and deep historical legacies at work in the crisis in Ukraine. In so doing it presents a highly plausible revisionist account which puts the West in a poor light and treats Putin’s Russia as a nation which, for all its faults and problems (Sakwa is under no illusions here), is more sinned against than sinning.
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There can be very few academics now operating who possess Richard Sakwa’s expertise in modern Russian (including Soviet and post-Soviet) international history. Why, then, do we not seen more of him in the mainstream media, both broadcasting and print? He has been on RT, discussing the Skripal poisonings amongst other things (no doubt leading some to suspect him of being an apologist for Putin, which he certainly is not).

But I have never seen him on (for example) BBC or Channel 4 (this does not of course mean he has never been interviewed there but it does suggest that any appearances have been somewhat limited). Why? Is this an accidental oversight, or are his opinions deemed by news and current affairs editors to be ‘unhelpful’?

Faced with these irresponsible distortions, and they are replicated in a hundred other prejudiced comments about Russian behaviour from western politicians as well as their eastern European colleagues, it is a relief to find a book on the Ukrainian conflict that is cool, balanced, and well sourced. Richard Sakwa makes repeated criticisms of Russian tactics and strategy, but he avoids lazy Putin-bashing and locates the origins of the Ukrainian conflict in a quarter-century of mistakes since the cold war ended. In his view, three long-simmering crises have boiled over to produce the violence that is engulfing eastern Ukraine.