In the early days of the Ukrainian army’s incursion into the Russian region of Kursk, as it became clearer that the operation was more than just a lightning raid, many outside observers expressed genuine confusion. The idea that Kyiv could organize a complex assault involving thousands of troops to seize territory in Russia seemed farfetched, given that Russian troops are still advancing in the Donbas region. Though the effectiveness of Moscow’s response to Kyiv’s offensive will remain unclear for some time, the incursion will have a profound impact on relations between communities along one of Europe’s longest borders.
Indeed, the current pattern of Russian invasion and Ukrainian counterattack playing out from the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine to the Russian town of Starodub near the Belarus border is reproducing these regions’ long historical experience of conflict involving rival powers. During the 17th century, endemic warfare between Russia’s Tsars, Crimean Tatar Khans, the Ottoman Empire, the vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Cossack Hetmanate that Ukrainians consider the direct forerunner of their state had such a devastating effect that contemporaries often called this vast swathe of land the “Wild Fields.” The cultural legacies of this era of endless war, including brutal pogroms targeting Jewish communities, continued to shape how these regions responded to a changing world long after their final conquest by Moscow in the early 18th century.
The way these conflicts and the many wars that followed often blurred ethno-linguistic boundaries between towns and villages on either side of the border has long been a profound source of anxiety for many Ukrainians. The current border was based on decisions made in Moscow to bolster the legitimacy of the Soviet regime among local populations. But deeper cultural trends within the two Soviet-era republics meant that a sense of distinctiveness had emerged among elites on the Ukrainian side well before independence in 1991, in ways that many in Moscow refused to acknowledge. In the first two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, the constant contact between intertwined communities along what had become an international border was instead presented by Russia’s political elites, including President Vladimir Putin, as proof that Ukrainians and Russians are one people.