The name “Ukraine” means “borderlands”. There are  many ​borders here —cultural, religious, and political. The Independent Republic of Ukraine is barely 30 years old, but waves of conquerors and empires have been changing the borders in this region for about a thousand years, since the ​first hordes of pagan mongols swept in from the east.The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is just the latest conflict that has turned this fault line in Eastern Europe into a battleground once more .