“The Russian has always seen in the Ukrainian a cadet to be put under guardianship”

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MAINTENANCE. In “The Crucifixion of Ukraine”, Jean-François Colosimo deciphers the current conflict in its theological-political history.

Interview by Christian Makarian

Dyears his new essay, The Ukrainian Crucifixion, published these days by Albin Michel, the historian and theologian Jean-François Colosimo goes back to the sources of the religious partition of Europe, from the founding of Constantinople, and delves into the historical roots of a conflicting identity . He thus attempts to shed light on the war of 2022 by traversing the lines of fracture which have dug ditches in this Eastern Europe prey to the appetites of empires. From the Rus’ of kyiv to Muscovy, Ukraine is located at the very origins of the Russia of the tsars, but also at the crossroads of the two Churches, that of Rome and that resulting from the Slavic tradition of Byzantium, which shaped its destiny. . Land of passage, mixing, but also land of blood, Ukraine has above all f…