My mother used to read a lot of books when I was a child and I saw how much enjoyment these books would bring her. A saga of technical incompetence and irresponsibility, of bureaucratic sloth, mendacity and plain contempt for human life, that Chernobyl affair epitomised everything that was wrong with the Soviet Union. For one thing, the Kievan Rus existed during time comparable to the modern day US: from at least 862 to 1237 (IF one takes only timespan before the start of the Tatar-Mongol Yoke). Anna Reid says that the answer to this questions depends on three different groups: Putin and Russia, the West and of course the Ukrainians themselves.

Reid covers events from the coming of the Vikings, to Stalin’s purges and beyond to the independence celebrations of 1991.She also highlights that independent Ukraine changed the inscriptions in memorials like Babiy Jar to clarify that the victims were Jews. Taking the waters in that German spa, Aleksandr II signed a decree banning all import and publication of Ukrainian books and newspapers, all stage-shows, concerts and public lectures in Ukrainian, and all teaching in Ukrainian, even for infants. There had been sporadic independence movements, but they seemed to have been often badly run, with no clear objective or direction, or subject to poor timing. After 24 February I decided that I want to know more about this country which is fighting so bravely and resiliently against a much larger hostile and brutal neighbour. One remarkable example is the crowdfunding which was initiated by the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation at the end of June.

The description of the disaster in Chernobyl shows how careless the Soviet Union dealt with a nuclear catastrophe and with human life. I think the fact that Anna Reid wrote the majority of it in mid 1990s makes it for me particularly fascinating. When Chernobyl exploded, the Ukrainians were kept in the dark about the dangers, and unnecessarily exposed to high levels of radiation. If you follow Julia Davis on Twitter and watch the excerpts she shares from Russian TV talk shows, you have the impression this is still the case on Russian TV.Her brisk and insightful style is also informed years banging out copy for that most erudite of British magazines. All the glorious history of the Kievan Rus, it's beginnings and developments have been largely left dismissed. She continues to tell the history of Kyiv and mentions that from the late fourteenth century until the mid seventeenth century nearly the whole territory of present-day Ukraine was ruled from Cracow, Poland.