Award-winning Ukrainian journalist Anna Romandash will examine the question of “Putin’s endgame” through the lens of history and dynamic events today. Exploring the topic of how wars end considers not only the military outcomes but also how societies understand victory, defeat, and their history. Drawing on Russian and Soviet history, Romandash will trace the Kremlin’s self-image and mythologized narratives of imperial war aims and possible exits from Ukraine. She will also address Russian and Ukrainian national narratives on how the war might end and the different interpretations of the war’s progress and potential conclusions. Placing the Russian war in a broader European and transatlantic context, she will examine historical parallels, including the international appeasement of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. (CMC Professors Wendy Lower and Jonathan Petropoulos, who are completing a book, Heinrich Himmler's Last Days and the End of Nazi Terror (Mariner, 2027) will comment on Romandash's assessment as a historical paradigm of the fate of genocidaires and how wars end.)