Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale, opens his course on Ukrainian history by using the 2022 Russian invasion as a lens on a deeper question: what does it mean for a nation to exist. He argues that Ukrainians' collective resistance on 24 February 2022 presupposes a society and polity that already existed, then works backward to ask how modern nations form generally, and why some national projects succeed while others fail. He traces how Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding are bound up with experiences in Ukraine, and notes that Ukraine suffered more directly from both Soviet and Nazi terror than any other country, making it a testing ground for understanding those systems. The lecture closes by asking whether Ukraine's post-colonial, multilingual character is a historical leftover or a model with future relevance. It serves as the introductory session for Snyder's full Yale course on Ukrainian history.