Why do mainstream journalists write as if today’s events just popped up out of nowhere? Why has it become de rigueur to ignore the events of all the yesterdays and yesteryears that brought us here? Where is that elusive ‘context’ in stories on Ukraine, Gaza, China and others? Without context, how can we navigate our way through the propaganda of an empire anxious to preserve its hegemony and a military-industrial complex pursuing ever increasing profits?

Every time I read yet another context-free news story on the war in Ukraine, I find myself thinking of British historian Orlando Figes. There are many eminent scholars and journalists whose writings provide the desperately-needed context for news stories on Ukraine. But I always think of Orlando Figes. Perhaps because I loved his dazzling masterpiece “Natasha’s Dance -A cultural History of Russia.” Or perhaps because everything he writes is nuanced and in context.

In a 2013 article Is There One Ukraine? | Foreign Affairs Orlando Figes wrote “Given how divided Ukraine is on these issues—and how incompatible Russia’s desires are with the European Union’s—Ukraine ought to consider applying a precedent from elsewhere in eastern Europe: deciding the country’s fate by referendum. The 1993 partition of Czechoslovakia, the so-called velvet divorce, was a mostly amicable division that was ratified, and thus legitimised, by the country’s own citizens. Ukrainian politicians could similarly allow the public to decide the basic course of the country’s foreign policy. It would be a messy process, and there would be many who argue reasonably that Ukrainian identity consists precisely in maintaining some link with both East and West. But foreign policy by referendum would be preferable to the permanent division of Ukraine, which is........

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