During the Euromaidan, the Russian-Ukrainian war did not only concern the fate of Ukraine or Russia, but also the future of the European continent. However, this was not the first time that the Ukrainian question played such an important role. The course of the First and Second World Wars, the 1917 October Revolution and the world communist system it generated were largely shaped by what was happening in and around Ukraine. And a few centuries earlier, the Cossack Revolution of 1648 under the leadership of Bohdan Khmel´nyts´kyi and the entry of the Cossack state into the Moscow kingdom marked the birth of the Russian Empire as a great European state. In other words, it is impossible to understand the transformation of Europe without considering Ukrainian events and developments, just as the current Ukrainian situation is impossible without the application of European history. This collection of articles naturally links these two perspectives. It contains materials from the first of several conferences organized by the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission, held in Berlin in May 2015.