Ukraine, of course, was an internationally recognized and independent state with a seat at the United Nations. But the links between the two countries certainly were complex: Millions of Ukrainians had Russian relatives, and both Russian and Ukrainian were widely spoken in Ukraine. The country’s famously fertile wheat fields had sustained both tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union—at least, until Joseph Stalin’s policies created a horrific famine in Ukraine, the Holodomor, that killed roughly 10 percent of the population.
