Battlefield Ukraine: lessons from history

left A 1919 caricature entitled ‘World peace in Ukraine!’ shows Ukrainians in the centre, under attack from a Bolshevik (to the north), a Russian White Army soldier (to the east), and (to the west and south-west) a Polish soldier, a Hungarian (in pink uniform), and two Romanian soldiers.

May 9, 2023

Ukraine has rarely had the luxury of secure borders: in the 16th and 17th centuries, much of its present territory was divided between Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and its protectorate, the Tatar Khanate of the Crimea. However, this period also saw the beginnings of a sense of Ukrainian national identity, as serfs escaping from Poland and Muscovy (Russia) took refuge in fortified camps (sichi) on islands in the Dnieper – the mighty 1,400-mile river that runs south towards the Black Sea. Under able leaders such as Przecław Lanckoron´ski, Ostap Dashkevych, and Dmytro Vyshnevetsky, these refugees gradually became a formidable military force, known as the Zaporozhian Cossacks. They were at le

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