Amid the fog of war, our guest essays on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offer personal analysis. They rest on the experience of members of the armed forces, politicians, strategists and historians, and illuminate the entanglement of cultural, military and economic factors behind the conflict. Some write in favour of action that The Economist argues against in its own leader pages, such as the establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The complexity of the situation means there is no more important subject on which to publish a variety of ideas at the moment.

In this special newsletter we present six of these essays (you can find the whole collection over at our By Invitation hub). I advise starting with Andrei Zorin of the University of Oxford. He provides the history of relations between Russia and Ukraine and describes important differences in their national mythologies. Where Russia traditionally looks to autocrats for redemption, Ukraine recalls the heritage of its Cossack military democracy.

For a sharp take on how Russia came to invade Ukraine once again, read Lithuania’s prime minister, Ingrida Simonyte. She pulls no punches. The West was too eager for Russian money in recent years, and too slow to heed warnings about Russian aggression. Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a think-tank, explains the worldview of Vladimir Putin and his coterie. He points out that Russia’s interests have been conflated with those of the elite. Meanwhile Sergey Radchenko, an academic, explains how Russia and China view each other. To finish, read the historian Yuval Noah Harari’s expansive take on the significance of Russia’s invasion. Humanity seemed to have moved beyond the age in which countries attacked their neighbours and seized land. No longer.