Stella Ghervas is a professor of Russian History at Newcastle University (U.K.) and author most recently of "Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union" (Harvard University Press, 2021)
The current bloody invasion of Ukraine by Russia is not a local ethnic conflict between Russian and Ukrainian civilians. Nor is it the product of a clash between the two ex-superpowers of the Cold War, some kind of Russian military back surge against the enlargement of NATO since the 1990s.