George Kennan’s “X Article” and “Long Telegram” mark the dawn of the Cold War, but he a historical figure and not much more? George Kennan’s legacy is still current and demands sustained consideration at present.

So many in the world of foreign affairs and military expertise miscalculated how the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine would play out. Once again, as has happened so many times throughout history, a smaller but spunky nation has held off far more powerful marauders.

In May 1905, when the Russian fleet was nearly destroyed by Japan’s navy at Tsushima, the decisive battle of the Russo-Japanese War, the global perception was unmistakable. For the first time since the Middle Ages, a non-European nation had defeated a European power in a major war. At the time, Russia was seen unambiguously as part of the West, a European power both in appearance and ambition.

The Memorial of Glory lies in the pine forest that edges northern Kharkiv. Built in the 1970s over the mass graves of partisans and civilians executed by the Nazis, it was designed as a Soviet shrine to victory. Like much of Kharkiv, a city of utopian architecture and bombed-out kindergartens, it feels suspended outside ordinary time.

By 2022, the war had been going on for half of my life, sometimes in the background; but this time it would be constant. The invasion brought the war louder and closer. It entered every Ukrainian home and life, including mine.