Review: The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins. From the Maidan to the Ukraine War, by Ivan Katchanovski

For someone with Ivan Katchanovski's academic record, it might seem superfluous for him to open his latest book with a preface that sets out his qualifications—a political scientist at the University of Ottawa; born and educated in Soviet Ukraine; an early supporter of Ukraine's independence; equally fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian; and a longstanding, widely published historian of the region.

But Katchanovski knows what he is doing, because he is one of the very few Western academics—and as few think-tankers and journalists—who reject what has become an ever more solid consensus on the war between Russia and Ukraine. Those credentials are crucial for him to make the case for what remain in many quarters highly unpopular arguments.

It is worth summarising that consensus at the outset: Russia's war on Ukraine is primarily an imperialist war about territory and re-establishing the Soviet, or Russian, empire.

The Euro-Maidan protests of 2013–14, which led to the flight of the then President, Viktor Yanukovych, were a peaceful popular revolution that ushered in a Western-orientated government with democratic support. Russian charges that Ukraine is fascist or harbours fascist sympathisers are a travesty. The war really began in 2014, with Russian military intervention in the east (the industrial Donbas) and the illegal annexation of Crimea, which is why it has become de rigueur to talk about the invasion of February 2022 as the full-scale invasion. Ukraine is fighting a good war, and was right to resist pressure to conclude a bad peace, as was on offer at Istanbul two months into the war.

In The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins, Katchanovski takes on all these contentions, and more, in thirteen closely argued and amply referenced chapters, starting with the Euro-Maidan killings of more than 100 protesters in February 2014, and concluding with a dissection of the failed peace initiatives to date, with a particular focus on the aborted Istanbul agreement, offering a tentative prognosis.

On Euro-Maidan, Katchanovski does not dispute that this is where the Russia-Ukraine war really began. But he rejects the presentation—the mythology—of those events as a peaceful popular revolution. What happened, he says, was in fact a coup, orchestrated by armed far-right groups who—and he adduces a mass of detail and witness accounts, both here and in a previous book to support this—staged a false-flag operation that killed the majority of the ‘Heavenly hundred martyrs’.

An agreement between the Yanukovych government and the opposition to end the violence was brokered by European foreign ministers, providing for Yanukovych to remain with limited powers until early elections, but broken almost immediately, with the killings blamed on Yanukovych and the notorious Berkut police. Yanukovych fled to a reluctant Russia, fearing for his life—a Ceaușescu solution, Katchanovki suggests, was in the works. An interim opposition government took over, leaving Ukraine in the pocket of the United States, which had at very least encouraged the protests—Victoria Nuland handing out cookies on Maidan Square being a familiar image. From then on, Katchanovski argues, Ukraine was essentially a US and Western colony, albeit with highly questionable democratic credentials.

There are two other major elements of the Western narrative with which Katchanovski takes issue. One is the extent of far-right, neofascist or Nazi influence, even power, in Ukraine—an accusation frequently heard from the Kremlin and a justification made by Russia for the 2022 invasion. Katchanovski's conclusion is that the number of overtly far-right devotees is very small and confined to such organisations as Right Sector and the Azov brigades.

But, he argues, those groups and individuals are embedded in parts of the political and military establishment, exerting an influence disproportionate to their numbers. That includes responsibility not only for many of the Euro-Maidan killings with a view to toppling Yanukovych, but also the deaths of more than forty anti-government protesters in a fire in Odesa in May 2014, and pressure successfully exerted on President Zelenskiy to abandon his 2019 election commitment to seek peace with Russia. Not only does Katchanovski regard all these episodes as key contributors to the war that started in 2022, but the influence of the far-right, he argues, has increased since then.

The failed Istanbul agreement is another point on which Katchanovski challenges the Western consensus, citing numerous sources to support the view that the agreement was not only acceptable to Ukraine, but had already been initialled, if not signed, when the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, acting as an envoy of the USA, called on Zelenskiy to call it off. A bad peace, he argues, was always going to be better for Ukraine than a good war.

Among other aspects of the Western and/or Ukrainian consensus challenged by Katchanovski are the casualty figures, which he says are higher for Ukraine than Kyiv has admitted; claims of widespread Russian war crimes, and the charge that Russia has targeted civilians: the proportion of civilian casualties, he says, are much lower than in many recent conflicts, including in the Balkans.

It would be wrong, though, to regard Katchanovski as veering towards sympathy with Russia. Overall, his appraisal is far more nuanced than that of some analysts who depart from the prevailing Ukraine-Western consensus.

He blames Russia, for instance, for over-reacting and breaking international law in annexing Crimea, and similarly argues that Russian claims that its 2022 invasion was preventative, against an imminent Ukrainian and/or Western threat, were unfounded. If there was any threat, then it was not imminent. He also rejects Russia's description of the invasion as a special military operation. Once casualties exceeded 1,000, he says, it became a war. As for what sort of war, he describes it as being at once a civil (intra-state) war between different groups of Ukrainians, an inter-state war (between Russia and Ukraine), and a proxy-war between the US, or NATO, and Russia. He also absolutely rejects Russian claims that either Zelenskiy or his government harbours far-right sympathies.

The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins is not just another study of the conflict. It is a tour de force of advocacy—for truth—a feat of evidence gathering and probably the closest that anyone has come to disentangling the host of conflicting narratives that have so characterised this war.

As a postscript, Katchanovski is to be praised for publishing it with open access, even if this reflects not just his determination to reach the widest audience, but the difficulty anyone who challenges a fixed consensus faces in getting heard. A lie, as has been said, can be halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. Thanks to Katchanovski, the truth has now got its boots on, but it may take a new generation of historians with an appetite for revisionism to set the record straight on the origins of what Katchanovski rightly describes as a tragedy for Ukraine.

The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins: From the Maidan to the Ukraine War, by Ivan Katchanovski. Palgrave Macmillan. 368 pp. Open access or hardback £44.98