Ukraine has also been a home to millions of Jews, serving as the birthplace of Hassidism - and as one of the killing fields of the Holocaust.

The mixing of sedentary and nomadic peoples and Christianity and Islam on the steppe borderland produced the class of ferocious warriors known as the Cossacks, for example, while the encounter between the Catholic and Orthodox churches created a religious tradition that bridges Western and Eastern Christianity. For centuries, Ukraine has been a meeting place of various cultures.

Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine was shaped by the empires that used it as a strategic gateway between East and West - from the Roman and Ottoman empires to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. As the award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe, we must examine Ukraine's past in order to understand its present and future. But today's conflict is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine's territory and its existence as a sovereign nation. Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense fight with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence.

The gates of europe serhii plokhy