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The new volume by Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, War and Punishment, begins with a stark address.“This book is a confession,” states the author, that “I too am responsible [for] Russian fascism”(1). Zygar seeks to “change the future” by cataloguing Russia’s colonialist and imperialist myths that have “infected” the country and led to the war against Ukraine (2). While Zygar is an engaging writer, however, he is more successful explicating familiar histories than in shedding new light on how and why the colonial myth about Ukraine has become such a central part of Russian political discourse.

The work compromises two sections. In the first, entitled “Seven Tales of Colonial Oppression in Ukraine,” Zygar explores the origins of a mix of myths and real events in Russia’s conception of Ukraine from the seventeenth century to World War II. Readers from Russia may not be familiar with the realities of Catherine II’s (or …