Reportedly, Ukraine has been one of the most corrupt countries on the face of the Earth. This is likely not a matter of some sort of defective national character, but rather a consequence of their geography and the past century of politics. Today, Putin, Democrats, and the US Deep State leverage Ukraine’s vulnerability to their own ends.

Anne Applebaum has done the real research and written the hard truths to power about evil perpetrated by the Soviet Union, including in Ukraine. Consider this MacClean’s interview of Applebaum on publication of her latest book, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.

Q: Part of the history is that the Holodomor didn’t come out of the blue. There has been a long continuity of attitude in Moscow—a contempt for Ukrainian nationalism—running through the Czarist, Soviet and post-Soviet eras. One of the more striking instances of continuity was Lenin sending in Russian troops in Ukrainian disguise during the Civil War, which almost a century later became a Putin tactic.