Russian troops have been attacking Ukraine since February 2022. The war has shattered the peace order in Europe. Eastern European historian Malte Rolf ventures an outlook on how the conflict will change the continent in the long term:

"Any outlook is speculative and historians in particular know how much perspectives can shift within 50 years. However, I think that we will still perceive the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine as a turning point in 50 years' time - in retrospect, not with the same severity as the Second World War, but comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union. We are experiencing a reconfiguration of political Europe that will continue to exist even after the Russian war of aggression. Russia is pushing itself out of this Europe through its imperialist policies and this will have consequences for decades.

We will also look at East Central Europe differently in the next 50 years. For a long time, parts of Germany were dominated by the view of Eastern and East-Central Europe as a purely intermediate space between Germany and Russia. But the countries there - such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine - will become even more important for us politically, militarily and economically. I also firmly believe that Ukraine will be integrated into Western structures such as the EU and NATO by then. Ultimately, Germany will reinvent itself and emerge from this conflict with a new self-image, for example as a bridge builder between Eastern Central and Western Europe. And ultimately also as a state with military significance, which we have not seen ourselves as for a long time. So we will remember the years after February 24, 2022 as a profound turning point."

Written by Henning Kulbarsch