A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
On the 13th of October, Mykola Riabchuk, a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Political Culture and Ideology, took part in a roundtable discussion on the Russian Invasion, organized at Princeton with several other visiting scholars from Ukraine. In his speech,
Dr. Riabchuk discussed a desperate lack of the adequate Western knowledge about Ukraine, its deep penetration and contagion with Russian imperial narratives that precluded for years if not centuries the development of adequate policy vis-à-vis his country. Year by year, Ukraine was described as totally corrupt, dysfunctional and dramatically divided. Of a sudden, it appeared to be resilient, well-organized and strongly consolidated. What are the reasons of Ukraine’s strength and unity? It is a high time for the Western experts to reconsider their Russia-inflicted stereotypes about Ukraine and, more generally, about the region, that facilitated the Russian expansion and still hinder the efficient international response to it.