Explaining Ukraine

In September 2025, in Kyiv, a prominent American historian Timothy Snyder received the Vasyl Stus Prize — a Ukrainian award honoring the name of Vasyl Stus, one of Ukraine’s greatest poets and dissidents of the 20th century, killed by the Soviet regime in 1985. Founded in 1989 by Yevhen Sverstiuk, another prominent Ukrainian dissident, the prize is now awarded by PEN Ukraine, the publishing house Dukh i Litera, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. Before the award ceremony, we held a public conversation with Snyder on the good and bad ways of thinking about history. Since interpretations of history often lie at the heart of both the good and the evil that people do, this question remains vitally important. *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Thinking in Dark Times seeks to find the light through — and despite — today’s darkness. *** UkraineWorld is an English-language media about Ukraine run by Internews Ukraine Listen to o