Ukraine is at the centre of world events today, and understanding the country’s politics, history and culture has never been more important. The Ukraine Shelf talks to leading authors, intellectuals, scholars and journalists about what we should be reading to understand Ukraine and its place in the world. The Ukraine Shelf is co-sponsored by the UCL European Institute, the Ukrainian Institute London, and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, with the support of the British Academy.

The Ukraine Shelf

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began not in 2022, but in 2014, with the invasion and occupation of Crimea. This episode explores Crimea’s significance as a strategically important nexus between east and west, between Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and as an integral part of Ukraine historically, politically and culturally. The focus of our discussion is Rory Finnin’s book Blood of Others: Stalin’s Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity (University of Toronto Press, 2022). 

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institute/ukraine-shelf-episode-1-crimea-elmaz-asan-and-rory-finnin 

The Ukraine Shelf Episode 1: Crimea with Elmaz Asan and Rory Finnin

Russia has attempted to repress and destroy Ukrainian statehood and identity over two centuries. In this episode, we trace the historical roots of Russia’s current aggression to imperial myths from the early 19th century, and look at how these myths have resurfaced repeatedly over time. We explore the most recent wave of violence through the tragic story of Victoria Amelina, a Ukrainian writer who was killed in a Russian missile attack in 2023. The books under discussion are Eugene Finkel’s Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two Hundred Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024) and Victoria Amelina’s Looking at Women Looking at War (Harper Collins, 2025).

See more: www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institute…lture-under-attack


The Ukraine Shelf Episode 2: Identity and Culture under Attach with Sasha Dovzyk and Eugene Finkel

In this episode, we explore the industrial regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. From 2014 until 2022, this was where Russia focused its war of aggression against Ukraine, killing and uprooting thousands of people. Russia claimed these regions were culturally and historically Russian, but history, and the people of these regions themselves, tell a different story: the majority consider themselves Ukrainian, and they overwhelmingly voted for Ukrainian independence in 1991. To get a better understanding of this region’s complex identities and its history as a resource-rich region on the edge of empire, we spoke to Professor Victoria Donovan of the University of St Andrews about her book Life in Spite of Everything (Daunt Books, 2025) and to historian and novelist Olena Stiazhkina about her novel Cecil the Lion Had to Die (Harvard, 2024).

More here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institute/ukraine-shelf-episode-3-eastern-ukraine-olena-stiazhkina-and-victoria-donovan

Ukraine Shelf Episode 3: Eastern Ukraine with Olena Stiazhkina and Victoria Donovan

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The Ukraine Shelf

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