Ukrainian history special

Ukrainian history special

Up next

The 'Cyprus Emergency’ and India’s nuclear mango deal

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We hear from a Cypriot lawyer, imprisoned by the British for almost two years during the "Cyprus Emergency” of 1955-1959. Our guest, Professor Rebecca Bryant, explains how this ...  Show more

Movie history: Seven Samurai and Casablanca

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is media, culture and creative industries lecturer Sarah Jilani. We start in 1954 with the Japanese film Seven Samurai which is widely considered to be one of world ci ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster
Witness History

In April 1986 a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, in the USSR, causing the worst nuclear accident ever. Sergii Mirnyi was in charge of a monitoring unit which measured radiation levels in the 30 km exclusion zone around the plant.(Photo: The Cherno ...  Show more

94. The Bloody History of Russia & Ukraine
Empire: World History

The history of Russia and Ukraine has been irrevocably entwined for centuries. When the Bolsheviks took over and Civil War erupted across the Russian Empire, Ukraine was one of the bloodiest centres of the conflict. Antisemitic pogroms and wanton violence destroyed whole communit ...  Show more

Ukraine's Dangerous Independence
Throughline

Months before Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, he published an essay on the Kremlin website called "On The Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine." In it, he suggested that Ukrainians don't really have their own identity — and that they never hav ...  Show more

95. The History of Putin's War
Empire: World History

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022, but how did we get to this point? After the brutality of the Second World War, Ukraine was completely under the control of Moscow. Then in the 1980s, with Chernobyl as the catalyst, the Ukrainian nationalist movement regained ...  Show more