Three months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we spoke to French historian Antoine Arjakovsky, a specialist on Ukraine and Russia. He told us that the conflict is a "war of civilisation" between two different visions of the world: Russia, a state that wants to become a "21st-century empire", and the "nation state" of Ukraine. Back before the Russian invasion, when Moscow already controlled Crimea, Arjakovsky gathered with 200 experts. They produced a report in 2019 explaining their fears that Russia would indeed invade the rest of Ukraine – but this warning fell on deaf ears in the West.
