E31: Russia’s War on Ukraine Explained: Motivations, Dynamics, and Consequences with CCNY’s Prof. Emeritus Rajan Menon

This episode explores the motivations for and the consequences of Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It features Dr. Rajan Menon, CCNY’s Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair Emeritus in Political Science; Director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities; Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University; and Global Ethics Fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. Dr. Menon considers the geostrategic reasons, including NATO’s expansion, as well as potential psychological reasons for Moscow’s decision. He examines how Putin’s war of aggression and his military’s atrocities on the ground in Ukraine have degraded Russia’s global position and the humanitarian and developmental consequences of this war for Ukraine and far beyond. His 2015 book (with Eugene B. Rumer), Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (Boston: MIT Press), is available as an open access PDF at:

You can listen to E31: Russia’s War on Ukraine Explained: Motivations, Dynamics, and Consequences with CCNY’s Prof. Emeritus Rajan Menon online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

E31: Russia’s War on Ukraine Explained: Motivations, Dynamics, and Consequences with CCNY’s Prof. Emeritus Rajan Menon is an episode from Rights Talk by CCNY Downtown.

This episode is 56:18 long.

This episode was published on May 19, 2022.

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