In 2014, Russia occupied Crimea, and that unexpected usurpation revealed a great deal of enduringly baffling challenges for international law. Their long list includes the policy of praising a blatant land-grab as ‘the restoration of historical fairness’. In the shadow of such rhetoric, we may wonder how the existing system of multilateral diplomacy is to withstand this peculiar style of legitimization.
In the current travails of Eastern Europe, Ukraine (just as any other polity endeavoring to defend its interests) is bound to rely on the finesse of her Diplomatic Service. And that makes the history of the aforementioned institution a fitting subject for at least a brief review. Continue reading
The events of the last few years made the world increasingly aware of what can be deemed as ‘the Matter of Ukraine’.
From the perspective of sometimes toffee-nosed historians, the aforementioned phenomenon comes as no surprise at all. The country in question (these dignified scholars would say) always turned out to be in the very thick of international showdowns. Such involvement entailed devious diplomacy, elaborate intrigues, as well as daring undertakings suitable for the best of historical fiction.
Alexander Dumas, Sir Walter Scott, or other masters of the genre, however, touched upon Ukrainian affairs only briefly – but this neglect that was hardly intentional. A great deal of Eastern Europe’s past still rests in the shadows of time, and it is our audacious intention to do something about it.
Today’s column will reveal a couple of those multilateral diplomatic schemes in which Ukrainians of the early modern era played their peculiar part.