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

“Any prognosis is speculative, and historians are particularly aware of how much perspectives can shift within 50 years. Nonetheless, I think that we will still see the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine as a turning point 50 years from now – perhaps not as drastic in retrospect 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 even after the Russian war of aggression ends. Russia is pulling away from Europe with its aggressive imperialist policy, and this will have consequences for decades to come.

Our perception of East-Central Europe will also change in the next 50 years. For a long time, the area in between Germany and Russia was perceived in some parts of Germany as just that – an ‚in-between’, and nothing more. But the countries of this region – states like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine – will become increasingly important for us, politically, militarily, and also economically. I’m also convinced that Ukraine will be integrated into Western structures such as the EU and NATO within the next fifty years. And finally, Germany will reinvent itself and emerge from this conflict with a new self-image, as a bridge builder between East-Central Europe and Western Europe, for example. And ultimately also as a state with military clout, which we haven’t seen ourselves as in a long time. We will thus remember the years after 24 February 2022 as a critical juncture.”