Ukraine's Unnamed War

Dominique Arel is Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa. His publications include Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine (co-edited with Blair A. Ruble, 2006). He organizes the Annual Danyliw Research Seminar on Ukraine and is Director of the Annual ASN World Convention at Columbia University. Jesse Driscoll is an associate professor of political science at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego. His publications include Warlords and Coalition Politics in Post-Soviet States (Cambridge, 2015) and Doing Global Fieldwork (2021).

'The 'unnamed war' in this brilliantly argued, comprehensively researched, and historically accurate book began as a civil war within Ukraine primarily fought between factions of what Russia has long imagined as their world. From this perspective, Arel's and Driscoll's analytic model reveals missed opportunities for a fragile peace that might have avoided Russia's imperialist invasion, where we can now envision only an endless war of attrition.' David D. Laitin, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University

• 1. A civil war within the 'Russian World'; 2. A theory of civil war onset in post-soviet Eurasia; 3. Before Maidan; 4. Regime change (Maidan); 5. Irredentist annexation (Crimea); 6. The Russian spring (East Ukraine); 7. The war and Russian intervention (Donbas); 8. A frozen conflict thaws.