The following lecture was delivered in March 2023 at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy as part of a benefit conference to raise funds to support public outreach at Kyiv Mohyla Academy. The subject I have chosen for myself is thinking about freedom in wartime Ukraine. The basis for this title is a conference I ran with some friends and colleagues in 2014, just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine began — the first Russian invasion, in the spring of 2014. I

Last July, Vladimir Putin supplied the mythical basis for Russian war propaganda in an essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” The essential idea is that Russia has the right to Ukraine because of things that happened a thousand years ago in Kyiv. At the time, the city was a trading hub of Viking slavers who were gaining dominance over local Khazars. It takes some fanciful thinking to see here a reason for Russia to invade Ukraine in the 21st century, as it seems prepa