Daniel Thomas is a first-year MARS-REERS student. His academic interests include the historical origins of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russo-Ukrainian relations, Russian imperialism and nationalism, Ukrainian regional history, Russophilism in countries bordering the Russian Federation, and post-Soviet military history. As an undergraduate, Daniel Thomas wrote a capstone project on the development of regionalist tendencies and pro-Russian separatism in late Soviet and early post-Soviet Donbas between 1985-2004; he conducted fieldwork in Ukraine, visiting the KGB Archives and the periodical archives. Thomas’s continued interest in the topic led him back to Ukraine, where he lived until the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. After fleeing the war, Daniel Thomas volunteered in Poland for six months, teaching Polish and Ukrainian high school students English through conversation-based classes centered on history, civics, and world cultures.