Historian Timothy Snyder explains why Russia must lose the war and how things might continue after Putin. He says: “Most countries only turned to democracy after defeat in an imperial war.”
Interviewed by
Sonja Zekri
The US historian Timothy Snyder once wrote that it was almost impossible to talk about Ukraine because the sheer extent of the suffering made looking at this country almost unbearable: Millions of people died under Hitler, millions who were killed by Stalin. And now Ukraine is suffering again. Snyder is one of the best experts on Eastern European history. He teaches at Yale, has rewritten the death zone between the Baltic States and the Black Sea in his book “Bloodlands” and has just recorded an audio book about the war: “On Tyranny and On UkraineOn the phone, he analyzes traces of old thinking in Putin’s ideology, but also in the German debate. Nevertheless, the conversation ends surprisingly hopeful – at least from the long-term perspective of the historian.