Every week brings grim and dramatic news from the war in Ukraine: Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian convoys; Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons; captured towns liberated by Ukrainian forces; young Russian men fleeing the draft. Yet it is no accident that Europe’s most destructive conflict since the second world war is taking place on Ukrainian soil. After the cold war, most of central and eastern Europe, including the three Baltic states that had broken free from the Soviet Union, were brought into Nato and the EU. But Ukraine remained a place of uncertain allegiance, neither in western alliance structures, nor aligned with Moscow, nor officially neutral.
每周都有關于烏克蘭戰爭的嚴峻而戲劇性的消息：俄羅斯襲擊烏克蘭民用車隊；弗拉基米爾?普京(Vladimir Putin)威脅使用核武器；被烏克蘭軍隊解放的城鎮；逃離兵役的俄國年輕人。然而，二戰以來歐洲最具破壞性的沖突發生在烏克蘭的土地上并非偶然。冷戰結束后，中歐和東歐的大部分國家，包括脫離蘇聯的三個波羅的海國家，都加入了北約和歐盟。但烏克蘭仍然是一個忠誠度不確定的地方，既不在西方聯盟結構中，也不與莫斯科結盟，也沒有正式中立。