UKRAINE: The country has always been more complex than these stirring Manichean explanations of a battle between the forces of good and absolute evil suggest. Diana Panchenko tells the story of a Ukraine that was seduced into becoming a kind of Anti-Russia. The Western narrative is simple and seductive: Putin is a bloodthirsty madman, Stalin's real heir, never satisfied with new conquests, and he attacked Ukraine only because the country wanted to be free and democratic.