Ukraine between Russia and the West. A contested identity - Gaetano Colonna

The Ukraine issue, its relations with Russia, the West and NATO, represents a decisive test for our continent. The book explores the country's recent history from the first attempt at independence to the end of the Great War, to the terrible trials of the Soviet period and the Second World War, up to the present day. The serious problems that Ukraine is facing today are deeply linked to European history and its special relationship with the history of the Slavic peoples and of Russia: thus dramatically emerges a contested identity between forces that today are designing their own future in a world in which old protagonists, such as China, and new configurations, such as the European Union, re-emerge. The book is also a stimulus to rethink European identity and the forms of its organization, in a perspective in which, by falling the barriers towards Russia, the real unity of the continent is completed, overcoming the logic of power with which to conceive relationships between peoples.