In the early 1960s I was studying near Moscow at the blandly named School No 101, which later developed into the Red Banner Institute of the KGB. One of my friends there was a Ukrainian who for some reason trusted me and was also trusted by the Soviet authorities, perhaps because he spoke Russian without any trace of a Ukrainian accent. In private he would tell me in great detail about Ukrainian history and also talk about Ukrainian art, music and literature, which he regarded as no less authentic and remarkable than what Poland and Russia had produced over the centuries. He was a deeply convinced Ukrainian nationalist who was sure that one day his country would become genuinely independent and an intrinsic part of Europe.

I was therefore not altogether surprised when I read in Ukraine Crisis, Andrew Wilson’s stimulating new book, that the ‘first serious Ukrainian counter-attack’ against the stealthy Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine this year was now headed by Vasily Krutov, a KGB veteran. I always knew that there were far more ‘decent’ KGB officers than is generally recognised in the West. And I have long realised that the course of Russian history owes far more to the influence of the ‘Tatar-Mongol yoke’ than to the Christianisation of ‘Holy Rus’ at the end of the tenth century in today’s Ukraine. This partly explains why Putin, brought up in the supposedly Western-oriented Leningrad, is more interested in neo-Eurasianism than in modern European values such as the rule of law, tolerance of minority views, respect for ‘ordinary’ people’s sense of their own dignity and constraints on the sorts of corruption of which both Putin and the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, are evidently guilty.

This is why the subtitle of Wilson’s excellent monograph is as important as the title itself, with the proviso that the outcome of the current Ukrainian crisis will have a profound impact not only on the West but also on the (so-called) Russian Federation. Ukraine was less influenced by the Tatar-Mongol occupation than was Muscovy, but in the recent past its way of life was more heavily affected by the brutal, Moscow-organised collectivisation of the peasantry and the massive purges of the 1930s than the rest of the USSR.

This partly explains, though it does not excuse, the collaboration of some Ukrainians with the Nazis during the Second World War, when Ukraine (and Belarus) suffered proportionally more than even Russia. This in turn helps to explain why the idea that the best future for Ukraine is neutrality between East and West is completely unrealistic, at least until Russia engages in a thoroughgoing de-Putinisation of its kleptocratic, if not simply criminal, political system. It’s profoundly sad that even moderate critics of Putin, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Aleksey Navalny, have said publicly that if by any chance they came to power in Russia they would not return the illegally annexed Crimea to Ukraine. In these circumstances, trust between the West (including Ukraine) and the Kremlin will remain minimal indefinitely.

That is, of course, unless the West gives in and undertakes another ill-conceived, badly timed and counterproductive ‘reset’ with Moscow. I have the impression that a higher proportion of Ukrainians now take ‘Western values’ seriously than is the case in western Europe and the United States, where so many people take these values for granted. The slow and weak Western response to the ‘totally unexpected’ annexation of Crimea may, however, prove to have been an example of the brilliant or accidental application of ‘smart power’, as the Kremlin could yet suffer the unintended consequences of this completely illegal action. (The fact that thousands of people have been killed or had their lives ruined would be regarded by practitioners of realpolitik as unavoidable collateral damage.)

Another unexpected consequence of Russian aggression in 2014 is that more than a few influential people in the West have finally woken up to the fact that the leaders of Putinist Russia have for years been engaging in a new Cold War, first against their own citizens and, more recently, against the West as well. Thanks to millions of brave and principled Ukrainians, Western appeasement of Putin seems to be coming to an end.

One can count the number of British experts on Ukraine without going into double figures. The number of academic institutions where one can study Ukraine and the Ukrainian language is even smaller. Perhaps this will now change for the better. Andrew Wilson’s book contains numerous perceptive and provocative thoughts that I haven’t the space to quote. I will simply repeat what the French thinker Bernard-Henri Lévy recently said: ‘Punishing the aggressor is good, but helping the victim is better’. Ukraine Crisis is a must-read.