Why the U.S. Misjudged Ukraine — The Influence of Russian Imperial Narratives on U.S. Policy

Yale Professor Timothy Snyder testifies before the U.S. Helsinki Commission at its hearing on Russia’s Imperial Identity. In this segment, Snyder explores the connection between Russian empire and the way the United States has thought about the Russo-Ukrainian war. Snyder suggests that many Americans are aware of Russia’s big history, big literature, and big past, such that many Americans imbibe the Russian imperial narrative according to which other peoples were secondary, irrelevant, troublemakers, nationalists to somehow be dismissed. He believes this helps account for the misjudgments that Americans made in general in February 2022 when we took for granted as a society and as a polity that Ukraine would break within a few days when Russia invaded. Snyder suggests that Americans have seriously underestimated the potential of Ukrainian Armed Forces and the potential of Ukrainian society partly because they have taken in imperial assumptions themselves. He suggests that the Russi