On Thursday morning, I emailed Lidiia Akryshora at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. I wanted to see if she would talk or write about Ukraine. Lidiia is a Ukrainian academic. She wanted to talk about her country but she wanted to provide an historical perspective too especially as Vladimir Putin’s latest falsehoods had included falsehoods about the history of Ukraine.

She said she would talk to people at the Institute and see what she could do. There were a number of people who could speak or write on the subject at the Institute which was set up in 1982 as a place where dissidents from Eastern Europe and intellectuals of all points of view could meet.

It remains the same place with permanent fellows such as Timothy Snyder. At the moment it is trying to do as much as it can for the people of Ukraine. Lidiia emailed later on Thursday to say she had something in mind. She had recorded a podcast she wanted to get out into the world about Ukraine. Herself and her colleague, the historian Katherine Younger spoke about the real history of the country and the lies and crimes of Putin. They were also distressed and upset about what is happening in Ukraine.

The podcast we put out today allows them to deliver that message, a message that talks about the lies of Putin and the disunity that remains in Europe and which Putin is still taking advantage of.

“This is an extremely important point,” Katherine Younger says. “While we recognise that Ukraine is the main focus, subduing Ukraine, because he does not see it as a legitimate state, is his primary aim. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t also have plenty of other things he wouldn’t mind accomplishing along the way. Sowing discord within the EU is one of those, scaring the other countries in the region is another, proving the extent to which NATO is really willing to back up its security guarantees is another. All of these things are pieces in the puzzle that he’s trying to assemble.”

How the EU and the US react to those aims will be critical for the people of Ukraine, but maybe critical for all of us as well.