Before Russia invaded Ukraine, like probably most people reading here, I had never heard of the city of Mariupol.
Only a year ago, someone made what I assume is a tourism-promotion video, celebrating a municipality that turned itself into a light show for Christmas. What is shown here is gone, blasted to bits, the survivors scattered, a city of about 400,000 people wiped away by conquest.
I am taking time to try to know more about this so-foreign part of Europe. Historian Timothy Snyder's fall lectures at Yale on The Making of Modern Ukraine are available in full and for free. In addition to being a language polymath, he's a charming lecturer. I highly recommend this series.
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