title: The Fight for the Past: Contested Heritage and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
abstract: Many in the West do not understand why Putin decided to attack Ukraine. Russian propagandists have thrown up a smokescreen, placing the blame on the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, slandering the Ukrainian government as a ‘Nazi’ regime, suggesting that ethnic Russians needed protection, or even insinuating a conspiracy by the West to destroy the Russian state and Russian culture. This article shows that there are deep underlying reasons for the invasion which are linked to how Ukraine and