Ukraine Is Not a Sovereign State

About this episode

Ukraine has had three revolutions since 1990: students on Kyiv's granite square, the Orange crowds of 2004, the Maidan in 2014. Volodymyr Ishchenko, a sociologist at the Institute for East European Studies in Berlin, argues that none of them built a stronger state, and that this, more than any Russian tank, explains where Ukraine stands now: a country whose budget is largely paid for by the European Union, run by elites who bet everything on an international order that may not outlast the war. He follows the argument all the way down, to who can pay a bribe to escape the draft, and who cannot. (00:00) - Intro/Welcome (01:14) - Is Ukraine still a sovereign state? (09:34) - Where the sovereignty went (14:49) - Three "weak, deficient revolutions" (18:51) - Israel, South Korea and other borrowed models (22:04) - Europe's Foederati (26:13) - The Georgian path (30:00) - Can Europe get its act together? (34:29) - Did the invasion make sense for Russia? (41:47) - Who rallied around Putin, and why (46:44) - Winners and losers on both sides (55:19) - "A Ukraine of our dreams" and the draft economy Jacob Shapiro Site: jacobshapiro.com Jacob Shapiro LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/