The second-largest country in Europe, Ukraine is a place of breath-taking landscapes, lush meadows, cherry orchards, and extremely fertile agricultural land. In the Soviet days it was commonly referred to as ‘the granary of the country’. Perhaps that explains why, over the centuries, Ukraine frequently looked like a lucrative gain for a horde of invaders: from the Ottoman to the Russian Empires, from Austro Hungary to the Soviet state. They ravished the land and suppressed the people.

Yet...