Since 2014 this European country of forty-three million people had moved in an emphatically pro-EU direction. Its progress had been imperfect but dogged. Putin seemed determined to stop Ukraine’s westward integration forever. Paradoxically, his theft of Crimea and war in the east had consolidated Ukrainian nationhood and identity. Differences that once existed melted away. The war made everything simpler. Putin and Russia were the enemy; a struggle for survival had begun; defeat meant subjugation and extinction.
