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This book offers a concise yet in-depth analysis of Russia’s complex—though consistent—strategic approach to Ukraine over the past 30 years, placing it within a broad historical and geopolitical context.
It reveals how Russia’s ambitions toward Ukraine have been deeply rooted in a patrimonial paradigm—marked by a long-standing tradition of instrumentalizing sovereignty and (international) law. The book explores Moscow’s use of ‘legal smokescreens’ to gradually erode Ukraine’s sovereignty. It argues that the full-scale invasion was the culmination of Russia’s failure to assert its patrimonial claims through legal and diplomatic means over 1991-2021, offering an anatomy of that failure.
Rilka Dragneva-Lewers is Professor of International Legal Studies at the University of Birmingham.
Kataryna Wolczuk is Professor of East European Politics at the University of Birmingham and Associate Fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House.
1. Framing Russia’s Attack on Ukraine’s Statehood
2. Russia’s Patrimonial Tradition
3. The End of the USSR and the Search for a Post-Soviet Patrimonial Model
4. Retaining Russia’s Foothold in Ukraine: Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet
5. Playing with Borders
6. Back to the Union? Russia’s Projects to Attract Ukraine
7. Cutting Ukraine Down to Size
8. From Failure to Failure?