Ken Christie on Russian troops in the Ukraine

War and conflict expert Prof. Ken Christie shares his thoughts about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, discussing parallels between the conflict and Germany’s strategies leading up to the Second World War, the eventual creation of NATO, and the impacts of western sanctions, on CFAX 1070 Afternoons with Ryan Price.

Here is some of what he had to say:

In discussing how Vladimir Putin frames the invasion as a peacekeeping mission to assist the two “independent republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, Christie says: “It's very similar to what Hitler said in 1938, when he said that there would be self-determination for Germans in the Sudetenland. And we know that Putin has been arguing for a long time.

‘The Russians in the eastern Ukraine have been discriminated against. There's a conflict going on.’ So it's very similar in some ways that Hitler invaded the Sudetenland and the allies at the time, especially the United Kingdom allowed them to do this, believing that as far as Hitler would go, that he wouldn't invade any further into Czechoslovakia.

“And what happened, of course, is Hitler simply took over Czechoslovakia. He took over Austria, and he continued to expand further. So this is a worry that Putin's strategy is somehow straight out of Hitler's playbook and that the justification or peacekeeping mission is very similar to what Germany did in 1930.”

Listen to the full interview