Advance ticket sales have ended but plenty of additional tickets will remain available at the door.
Profs and Pints Athens presents: “What’s Driving the War in Ukraine,” a look at Russia’s pretexts and real motives for invasion, with Joseph Kellner, who teaches Russian and Soviet history as an assistant professor at the University of Georgia.
An air of mystery surrounds Russia and its history. People describe Russia as a land of impossible contradictions and speak of the unknowable Russian soul. It’s all nonsense, though, that’s convenient for the Russian regime as it pursues its ongoing war.
Gain a clear understanding of that conflict—and what’s driving Russia, Ukraine, and NATO—at the debut of Profs and Pints at the Foundry at the Graduate Athens hotel just north of UGA’s campus. A social enterprise devoted to democratizing access to higher learning and providing scholars with new audiences, Profs and Pints has made a name for itself in Washington D.C. and other cities as a provider of outstanding talks shedding light on history, foreign policy, and a host of other subjects.
Professor Kellner’s talk will take us back a thousand years ago with the medieval separation of Ukraine from Russia, but we won’t stay there long. Instead, we’ll learn how Russia’s version of this “deep” history is essentially empty. The real roots of the current war are in the last hundred years, in the history of the Soviet Union and Russia and Ukraine’s place after its collapse.
Dr. Keller will also discuss NATO’s central role in both the current conflict and the lead-up to it, providing important context on how its mission evolved with its expansion into Eastern Europe.
You’ll learn how Ukraine’s boundaries became so contentious and what it will take to keep the conflict there from recurring or becoming chronic. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image by Jernej Furman / Creative Commons