As a professor, I teach how and why history matters. Yet, over the course of the past year, even I was unprepared for just how much it mattered.

By using a twisted version of history as conceptual undergirding for his invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is weaponising the past. History, he claims, justifies his years-long attempt at subordinating Ukraine through violence — an effort that intensified exponentially on February 24 2022, when he ordered a 190,000-strong force to attack.

The decision has been catastrophic for both invader and invaded. The estimated number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is nearing 200,000. The number on the Ukrainian side is probably more than 100,000, in addition to an immense number of civilian displacements, injuries and deaths.