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When empires collapse – how history is repeating itself in UkraineWhen great empires collapse, and when emperors lose touch with reality, trouble tends to follow. An eminent political historian is not shocked by current events in Ukraine. The present war in Ukraine is largely rooted in a Russian nostalgia for empire and in the territorial and geopolitical conflicts that usually erupt when great empires – of which the Soviet Union was a modern variant – collapse.