The Tragedy of Ukraine | Book Talk with Nicolai N. Petro

## Framing the Ukrainian tragedy: narratives, therapy, and a way forward Ukraine's current catastrophe is not merely a clash of armies or a contest of geopolitics; it is a rupture in a shared social fabric. The conversation with Nicolai N. Petro reframes the conflict as an intra-societal tragedy—an unfolding Greek drama writ large across history, identity, and policy. That shift matters because it changes what we seek: not only victory or deterrence, but recognition, catharsis, and the possibility of rebuilding relationships that can prevent the repetition of violence. Reading contemporary Ukrainian politics through the lens of classical tragedy invites us to take responsibility for how historical narratives, domestic policies, and international behaviors have combined to produce a self-made catastrophe—and, crucially, suggests tools for managing and healing it. The conversation places emphasis on two intertwined realities. First, public sentiment is malleable: narratives can be used to magnify fear or to cultivate hope. Second, some of the most destructive dynamics are internal: rivalries, exclusionary national projects, and political actors who profit from the continuation of conflict. Both are accessible to purposeful intervention. The question then is not whether tragedy exists—Petro argues it does, and it is recurring—but whether societies can learn to interrupt the cycle. His book offers an analytic toolkit drawn from Greek tragedy and modern transitional mechanisms to imagine how Ukraine, and other divided polities, might move from revenge to reconciliation. ## What is tragedy for politics—and why it matters for Ukraine Petro borrows from classical models to propose a diagnostic and therapeutic approach. In the Greek tradition, tragedy is not simply an art form; it is a communal technology that confronts a polis with its own flaws. Key moments—anagnorisis (recognition), catharsis (emotional purge), and dialogue—are designed to expose the missteps that lead communities into spirals of vengeance, and to leave them better equipped to resume peaceful social life. Applied to Ukraine, this model reframes the conflict as self-produced rather than wholly external. Petro stresses that tragic cycles are rooted in human choices: policies that sever economic and cultural ties, rhetorical strategies that portray neighbors as existential threats, and political formations that exploit grievances for power. That observation shifts culpability. By focusing on how Ukrainians, Russians, and their external partners have each contributed to the slide toward confrontation, the tragic framework encourages a politics of responsibility. Recognition—publicly acknowledging the ways policies and narratives stoked mutual hatred—becomes the first step toward any sustainable settlement. This is not sentimental reconciliation. The Greeks understood that catharsis does not erase suffering; it reorders the community’s capacity to handle violence without repeating it. Petro’s analytic move is to ask whether modern institutions can replicate that function. He finds a practical analogue in truth and reconciliation processes—deliberative, public mechanisms that invite communities to witness, confess, and reframe their shared past. The implication is clear: conflict resolution in Ukraine will require more than ceasefires and territorial adjustments; it will require public practices that change how Ukrainians see one another. ## The far right: marginal strength with outsized impact One of the more contentious and consequential chapters of the conversation concerns the role of far-right groups in Ukraine. Petro argues that while these movements are numerically small in most regions, their political influence is disproportionate because of three structural effects. First, they supplied the organized coercive capacity—"muscle and organization"—during the 2014 Maidan events. Second, they provided battle-ready fighters for the early Donbas campaigns at moments when regular armed forces were unreliable or politically constrained. Third, they have promoted an exclusionary nationalist narrative that positions the Ukrainian project in explicit opposition to Russia and to political pluralism. Petro and other scholars cited in the conversation are careful to distinguish empirical fact from propagandistic caricature. The far right is neither a monolith nor the dominant popular force across Ukraine, yet it functions as a powerful ideological brotherhood. These groups act less as conventional parties and more as shadow institutions bent on reshaping national identity. Their leverage comes from coercive capacity, symbolic capital, and a willingness to thrive in persistent crisis. The troubling consequence is that wartime conditions can make them indispensable to state survival in the short term, while allowing them to entrench long-term social exclusion and shape postwar norms. The conversation makes another disquieting point: Western militaries and advisors have, out of practical necessity, engaged with these actors on the ground. That raises hard policy questions about the costs of short-term alliances with groups whose values contradict liberal democratic norms. Petro suggests Western actors are aware of the dynamic and, for now, tolerate an uncomfortable partnership in the hope that state institutions will mature and marginalize extremist elements. The danger is that such tolerance can harden dependency: groups that grow accustomed to influence during war may resist any postwar demobilization. ## Crimea, Donbas, and the inevitability of cycles When Petro asks whether there is "no escape from tragedy," his answer is both sobering and conditional. He agrees with the Greeks that tragedy is endemic to human affairs; cycles of vengeance, exclusion, and reprisals will recur unless actively interrupted. But that bleak diagnosis does not preclude strategy. Recognizing that tragedies are self-made suggests a practical remedy: if actors can publicly identify and admit how their policies contributed to conflict, they can begin to rebuild trust. The Crimea and Donbas chapters of the conversation underscore how historical grievances, policy detachment, and abrupt shifts in state direction produced deeply layered wounds. Post-independence Ukrainian decisions to sever economic, cultural, and institutional ties with Russia—sometimes pursued for legitimate sovereignty reasons—nonetheless had the effect of alienating large segments of the population. Coupled with Russian revisionism and external coercion, this policy mix helped create the tinder that ignited in 2014. Petro’s insistence on nuance matters: it refuses the binary of pure victimhood or pure blame, and instead looks for the tangled causality that makes reconciliation possible or impossible. The strategic question becomes how to lengthen the interval between tragic cycles. That requires institutionalized practices that force recognition and catharsis, and that channel grievances into dialogue rather than revenge. It also demands political courage: leaders must anticipate that temporarily embracing reckoning and compromise will be unpopular with factions that profit from perpetual crisis. The conversation lays bare how fragile that political calculus can be—but also how necessary. ## Truth and reconciliation as modern Dionysia Petro’s most constructive contribution is his argument that truth and reconciliation mechanisms offer a workable modern analogue to the therapeutic functions of Greek tragedy. Unlike the mandatory, ritualized Dionysia of the ancient polis, contemporary societies lack a universal, civic ritual to purge hatred. Yet commissions in South Africa, Guatemala, and Spain show how structured processes of truth-telling, public testimony, and negotiated forgetting—or remembering—can transform societies scarred by long wars or authoritarian rule. South Africa’s model highlights the role of moral and religious authorities in

The Tragedy of Ukraine In this video, we talk about the Book called The Tragedy of Ukraine, its components, and discussing on better futures more than fearful futures. https://v.gd/tragedy -- link to the publisher, De Gryuter https://www.amzn.to/3UC8xcn -- link to Amazon.com Free samples of the text are available on Google Books -- https://t.ly/EkeZ Nicolai got his PhD from the University of Virginia in 1984, and taught at the Monterey Institute where he founded the Center for Contemporary Russian Studies. He was a Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, worked at the US Embassy in Moscow, and monitored election results in Russia, Belarus, and Latvia in the early 1990s. Since then he worked with many different private and public offices in Russia and did various research fellowships. He holds an Honorary doctorate from Novgorod State University and he is a member of the American Committee for US-Russian Accord. Nicolai has worked for decades on Russian and Ukrainian politics. His books include “Russian Foreign Policy: From Empire to Nation-State” (1997), “Crafting Democracy: How Novgorod has Coped with Rapid Social Change” (2004), and in December 2022 he will publish, “The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict” (2023). #M3 If modern history has shown us anything, it is how easily manipulable public sentiment is. And while we typically look at this with dismay, I pointed out back in 2005 in my book, Crafting Democracy, that this also opens the door to the possibility of positive narratives being used to imagine better futures instead of more fearful futures. #M2 Welcome, everybody. This is Pascal again from Neutrality Studies, and I'm here one more time with Nicolai N. Petro, who's a professor at the University of Rhode Island and the author of The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classic Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution, to be published this month, December 2022. In this second part of the interview, we will be focusing on his new book and its arguments. Nicolai, you're publishing this work at a very crucial moment, when the war in Ukraine seems to have reached a fever pitch. Can you, first of all, tell us about your book—what it is about? Give us kind of the elevator pitch for the work. #M3 So I've been looking at the issues of conflict in Ukraine for more than a decade, and I couldn't find a good key that would explain the recurring themes that I was able to see in Ukrainian history over several decades. As I began to look at them, they appeared to me more and more familiar, reminding me of a book that I had read a while back and that remains a classic, which is Richard -- 1 of 7 -- Ned Lebow's The Tragic View of Politics. In his book, Lebow looks at classical Greek tragedy as a mechanism for understanding international relations—relations between states. I thought that's all very well and good, but it seems to me also applicable to relations within states. And so that's what I set out to do with respect to Ukraine. So, there are six chapters. The first chapter explores what tragedy is and its therapeutic function for societies that are at war and in social conflict, because the easiest way, I think, to understand the Peloponnesian War is not as a war among different societies, but rather as a war between the Greeks themselves—a family affair, if you will. One of the things that the classical Greek tragedians tried to do in order to heal their societies was to remind themselves of the humanity of the other side, which, in the course of war, they are taught to hate, but then, in the restoration of peace, they have to learn compassion for as well. So that was the goal, broadly speaking, of classical Greek tragedy. And then I specifically explore different aspects of the current conflict in Ukraine, moving from the historical aspirations for independence for Ukraine, and then, secondarily, domestic policies that have been pursued in Ukraine since its independence, which were designed to cut off its very lucrative relationship with Russia on basically every level. And finally, to the latest conflicts after 2014 in Donbas and Crimea. And at the end, I ask the question: Is there a mechanism comparable to tragedy in the modern world that could also serve a therapeutic function? And I give the example of something that we perhaps should be looking at because it's been so successful in over 50 countries over the past 45 years, which is truth and reconciliation commissions. So that's what I have to offer in terms of my analysis of Ukrainian politics. #M2 I would very much hope that that vision comes true, because at the moment, I think the one thing we can agree on is that truth has been thrown under the bus. It's really, really hard to get any kind of reliable information about what is happening in and around Ukraine. And the level of propaganda on all sides has reached new heights, I believe. But your book actually has six chapters, and in the latter part, you focus on Crimea, the Donbas, the far right, and lastly, what you call a flawed peace. I would like to talk about those. Maybe let's start with the far right, because the far right is one of these issues that, especially in the West, is being portrayed as a Russian talking point—there are no Nazis in Ukraine, this is pure propaganda. But in your book, you're actually writing about the political influence the far right has had for decades. Can you maybe explain that a little bit? Or what are the most important things to understand about far right politics in Ukraine? #M3 Sure. So over the last decade, there have been at least 60 articles in major Western English- language newspapers on the rise of the far right and neo-Nazi groups. Multiple articles in The Independent, Newsweek, The Guardian, Reuters, Associated Press, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles -- 2 of 7 -- Times, The Nation, to name a few. In the Israeli press, there have been multiple articles in the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and the journal The Tablet. The issue of the rise of the far right was also flagged by Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the Atlantic Council, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These are not hard to find, and they are part of the historical record. My research in my book, along with that of the noted Ukrainian scholar Volodymyr Ishchenko, now at the Freie Universität in Berlin, and Richard Sakwa, Gordon Hahn, and others, finds that the far right plays an outsized role in Ukrainian politics for three reasons. First, it provided the muscle and the organization for the 2014 Maidan ouster of then-President Yanukovych. Second, it had battle- ready troops ready and willing to fight in Donbas in 2014 and 2015 when the Ukrainian army initially would not. Third, it had a ready-made ideology of nationalism that could provide the country with a new unifying identity as being the antipode of Russia. And for all these reasons, a set of organizations which was, and continues to be, outside of three regions of Western Ukraine a marginal political force, plays a much larger ideological and organizational role in the current Ukrainian government than their numbers would suggest, precisely because they're not organized merely as a political party, but as a political brotherhood whose objective is to transform the direction of the nation as a whole, really regardless of the political system. They're not that interested in the political system, but in having the clout and the ability to direct and make sure that the direction of the country remains true to the objective of a pure Ukrainian nation. They thrive in the context of war. War makes them indispensable. #M2 And they are very small, but they are very threatening to the political process. In the beginning of one of your chapters, you write that every new president of Ukraine sets out to be the peacemaker with Russia, and he ends up being a new incarnation of Stepan Bandera because they are pushed to the right by these small groups. Are you afraid that even somebody like President Zelensky is actually threatened by them? I mean, would Mr. Zelensky be deposed if he went in a direction that is not in the interest of these ultra-right nationalist groups? #M3 The quote you cite is actually from the former Minister of Transportation, Emilian, who made the statement that it is inevitable that every Ukrainian president will turn out to be an enemy of Russia. I don't know whether the far right could politically remove the president, but that is an explicit threat that they have made continually since 2014. Whether or not they have the capacity to do so, we don't know, but it is part of the rhetoric and part of the way in which they ensure the political loyalty of the regime. #M2 -- 3 of 7 -- Do you know how far the US and NATO are aware of this dynamic, and whether they have any influence on this far-right sector in Ukraine? #M3 I assume that the United States government, and particularly the Department of Defense, as well as NATO institutions, are well informed about these organizations because it would be impossible, I think, to interact with Ukrainian political and military institutions without coming into contact with them. And certainly, the Western military advisers I’ve encountered—British military advisers I’ve had the opportunity to meet—were in contact with these organizations in order to ensure the effectiveness of their military mission. They are an integral part of the Ukrainian armed forces. So there's nothing unknown, I think, to the West, both in terms of the direction and function of the far right in Ukraine. It's plausible to suggest that these are inconvenient bedfellows for Western Europeans, but a necessary evil, so to speak, and that they expect that as Ukraine becomes more independent, it will also become somehow more pluralistic and liberally minded, and that consequently the role of the far right would be reduced in Ukrainian politics. But that is something the far right is aware of, and they are doing everything in their power to ensure that does not happen. And one of the things that I think is not very well understood in the West is that right now, the far right's animus is directed at Russia. But in ideological terms, in terms of political pluralism, in terms of the kind of social acceptance of liberal values that are widely endorsed in the West, the far right is just as much an enemy of Western liberal thinking, including such things as specific rights for sexual minorities and other minorities. This is something that the far right is vehemently opposed to. #M2 You know, I wish I could say I've never heard of a situation where Western powers arm highly violent minority groups in a country that then eventually turn against them and blow up their World Trade Centers. I wish that hadn't happened before. I don't know why we keep doing this. This frustrates me beyond compare. But maybe let me move to my next question, because in chapter five, you talk about Crimea and the Donbas, and you ask this question: is there no escape from tragedy? What's your argument there, and how do you answer your own question at that point? #M3 There is no permanent escape from tragedy, the Greeks argued, because it's part of our human nature. But that doesn't mean we cannot manage relations better. And part of managing the relationship and escaping the current tragic cycle—and prolonging the distance between tragic cycles—is to recognize what a tragic cycle is. Let me say a few words about that, because the answer to your question is essentially the way I describe tragedy, how it unfolds, and how one -- 4 of 7 -- escapes it. Every tragedy, I point out, is self-made. The resolution to it, therefore, lies in recognizing how we contributed to it—to our own tragedy—and therefore choosing to break ourselves out of the cycle of vengeance of which we are a part. And this is done through three steps. The first is the Greek word anagnorisis,