This book is actually two books packaged as one.

The First Part, titled “Why the War in Ukraine is Changing the World,” written by journalist and author Stavros Lygeros, is a study of the geopolitical, diplomatic, military, and geo-economic dimensions of the Ukrainian crisis. The conclusion of the study, as the title suggests, is that this war, whatever its outcome may be, will qualitatively change the international system, and the World will be geopolitically and geo-economically different. The transition from today’s globalization to a new bipolarity, where one side will be the West and the other the emerging Eurasian framework, is clearly visible. The war in Ukraine was a product of this underlying trend, but its manifestation accelerates and radicalizes developments in one direction or the other. In this sense, it will have a much greater impact than the major wars after 1945 (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq).

The Second Part, titled “The Complex Relations of Ukrainians and Russians in History,” written by Dr. Sotiris Dimopoulos (graduate of the University of Kyiv), is the only study in the Greek literature on how any racial and national identities were formed in the geographic area of Ukraine over the last millennium, starting from when some prototypes of state entity began to emerge in the region. Although clearly distinct, the two studies are complementary in the sense that contemporary events gain a different interpretive completeness when placed in their historical context.

This allows the reader to understand the complexity and fluctuations that characterize the relations of today’s warring parties, Ukrainians and Russians, realizing that the notion of “Ukrainianness” until a few years ago did not have the same content and geopolitical significance for all Ukrainians.