About the current issues in Ukraine, Politico has a good long article laying out the history of the peoples of both Ukraine and Russia. Honestly, reading it will probably be TMI for most with a casual interest in the region. I do, however, very much endorse the following sentiment.
What can you do when your former imperial master declares that it cannot live without you? Putin’s historical article from last summer is essentially a statement of unrequited love and illustrates Russia’s core problem vis-à-vis Ukraine: It thinks of itself not as a nation but as an empire.
Imperial ambitions are not easy ones to give up, certainly Putin hasn’t lost them. In Putin’s plaints, I’m hearing echoes of Britain’s former talk of India as the jewel in its imperial crown. It is unfortunate Kiev/Kyiv was the long-ago capital of the entire Rus (Viking) nation, when Moscow was still a remote backwater.
