My family from my father’s side originates from what is now Ukrainian territory. They were forced to move west ward to what is now Poland after World War 2.
Ukraine was never a homogeneous place. There were large groups of Polish, Jewish, Romanian, Belorussian, Russian, Bulgarian, Crimean Tatars, Hungarian and Ukrainian.
Those territories have also been shifting from nation to nation and people have been displaced throughout its history.
If we take the city of Lviv, which sits next to the Polish border in Western Ukraine.
Before World War 2. The city of Lviv had a population of 63.5% (!) Polish citizens. After World War 2 this dramatically dropped to 10% and 1959 onwards to less than 2%. This was partially a population exchange and partially ethnic cleansing of ethnic Poles by Ukrainian nationalists.
The same goes for the Jewish population in Ukraine and many other minorities.
During World War 2, Ukrainian nationalists actively collaborated with the nazis and these ethnic cleansing pogroms were part of that.
One of the reasons why I have a problem with the U.S. supporting regime change in the world is because they often support outright fascist governments as they did with Pinochet in Chile or the terrorist communist regime of Cambodia: Khmer.
Ukraine government now is infested with nationalist and sometimes fascist elements. Since the coup in 2014 there were petitions and talks of erecting a statue of Stepan Bandera, openly admiring him.
Stepan Bandera orchestrated the assassination of Poland’s Minister of the Interior Bronisław Pieracki in 1934. He was a far right ultra nationalist. Also instigating and orchestrating pogroms against non-ethnic Ukrainians.
There are plenty of elements to this day in Ukraine who support this guy. There are marches through the streets of large cities of far right extremists.
(thousands march to honour Nazi collaborator in Kiev - The Times of Israel)
BBC: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict - BBC News
And these are low-key being supported by the U.S. - financially as well as armed. The same they did in other places around the world. On one hand they are crying wolf and on the other they are the ones arming Al Qaeda, ISIS and other extremists in the Middle East and now far right extremists in Ukraine.
This is why I strongly dislike U.S. foreign policy. Because it is all a lot of mumbo jumbo on media TV and so many fall for it. Every. Single. Time. You would think people start to see the pattern, but they will still blindly follow the U.S. into their democracy wars - which nobody asked for, but they were forced upon anyway.
Now when we look at a map of ethnicity in Ukraine, we can see that the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk are predominantly Russian oriented. People feel Russian culture and speak mostly Russian.
Putin would never want to take entire of Ukraine and give himself a headache of cosmic proportions navigating that cesspool of ethnic tension. He would be interested only in the near Eastern parts which house many ethnic Russians. The same he did with Crimea, which by all means, is majority pro Russian. It was also given away by Chroestjov to Ukraine.
On top of all of this. True Ukrainians are ethnically Rus. The original Rus settlements of Kiev was were the entire Rus civilization spawned from and started establishing various Duchies. The Duchy of Moscow, Duchy of Novograd, St. Petersburg and so forth.
Ukrainian language is literally sounding 50% Polish and 50% Russian. I understand Ukrainian almost to the entire extent.
I have nothing against ordinary Ukrainians, but nazi, fascist and the blind support of U.S. geopolitical meddling, yes, I do and always will. And I don’t even care about Russia as I think it is a hellhole for its own reasons and the general populace there has got a tremendous task at hand to change the direction they are heading in.
I am glad to see that France and Germany are trying to navigate this a bit more independently. Going to Moscow and Kiev to try reach a solution.
The U.S. isn’t interested in a solution.
Came off maybe incoherent towards the end, but this will explain my stance on this topic from my perspective. Which is a bit more local than the average Westerner can see it
