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Intent to Destroy : Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine - Eugene Finkel

Intent to Destroy

Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine

By: Eugene Finkel

Paperback | 9 October 2025 | Edition Number 1

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'A masterpiece' Peter Pomerantsev

'Powerful' Serhii Plokhy

'Fascinating' Daily Telegraph


A history of Russian violence waged against Ukraine across the centuries.

Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. And yet this attack was in fact the latest episode in a centuries-long Russian campaign. In Intent to Destroy, leading scholar of genocide and Eastern Europe Eugene Finkel uncovers the deep roots of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ever since the rise of Russian nationalism in the nineteenth century, the domination of this key borderland has become a cornerstone of Russian and Soviet policy. Using genocidal tactics - killings, deportations, starvation and cultural destruction - against ethnic Ukrainians and minorities including Tatars, Jews and Poles, Russia's long-standing policy has aimed to obliterate Ukrainian identity. This eradication has consistently been a part of the Kremlin playbook and leads inexorably to the violence we see today.

Told with the astonishing power of Finkel's connection to this living history, and the authority of two decades of research, Intent to Destroy casts today's war it its broadest historical context, illuminating as never before Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II.
 
 
Industry Reviews
This is the must read masterpiece to understand Russia's mission to destroy Ukraine over hundreds of years - and the heroic resistance against it. Utterly essential if you want to know what's at stake in the greatest war in Europe since WWII

Vladimir Putin claims that Russians and Ukrainians are one and the same people, but as Eugene Finkel convincingly argues in his new book, the relationship between the two nations has been anything but brotherly, with Russians doing their best to dominate and recently destroy Ukraine. A powerful antidote to those who claim that NATO is the main culprit responsible for the current war

Fascinating

Eugene Finkel, who correctly called Russia's war against Ukraine "genocidal," makes the case here with erudition and verve. Those who want Russian perspectives on the war will find the relevant ones here

Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2022 surprised many of us. But it shouldn't have. Eugene Finkel's masterful account of centuries of Russian designs on Ukraine spells out why Moscow won't leave Kyiv alone and what defenders of Ukraine should do about it. A must read account of the most important foreign policy question of our age

Finkel has written a superb and above all readable guide for the perplexed . . . Masterful

The parallels between present and past in Russia's war on Ukraine are breathtaking. A work of deep expertise and sober sensitivity, Intent to Destroy connects these threads and details the repeated waves of devastation that have resulted from Russia's long-term obsession with eradicating Ukraine's separate identity

A powerful indictment of Russia's centuries-long obsession with eliminating the Ukrainian identity, language, and people

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