For the most part, they too voted for independence.įor most of the first two decades after independence, ethnic Russians have lived peacefully with Ukrainians and the country’s other ethnic minorities.īut that changed in 2010 when Viktor Yanukovych, a politician from Donetsk, became Ukraine’s president. The large minority of ethnic Russians – 17.3% of the population at Ukraine’s last census in 2001 – were included as Ukrainian citizens in an independent state. When Ukrainians voted for independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, all of its 24 “oblasts,” or regions – including Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea – supported independence. To this day, the Donbass remains the heart of Ukraine’s industrial economy. These new residents drove Stalin’s industrialization campaign. The famine, known as “Holodomor,” made it possible for ethnic Russians to move into the territory of Ukraine. In 1932-33, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orchestrated a famine that killed some 4 million Ukrainians in the eastern regions.

Ukraine’s ethnic makeup today – with an especially large minority of Russians living in the east – reflects the country’s absorption into the Soviet Union from 1922.Įthnic Ukrainians lived across the country before it was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Viewing Ukraine as a country split between pro-Moscow ethnic Russians and pro-Western Ukrainians, however, is a gross oversimplification. And Russia has allegedly been promoting “Russian World” ideology through the arming of pro-Russian separatists in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. Ukraine – both in 2014 and with Putin’s seemingly increasingly belligerent stance now – provides the perfect landscape for this concept. The ideology also asserts that no matter where Russians are in the world, the Russian state has a right and an obligation to protect and defend them. In the years leading up to Russia’s military actions, Putin and his allies often invoked the concept of the “ Russian World” or “Russkiy Mir” – the idea that Russian civilization extends to everywhere that ethnic Russians live. The Donbass and Crimea are both home to large numbers of ethnic Russians and people who primarily speak Russian. The fact that it came just two years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region didn’t help. Placing a mammoth depiction of Vladimir in the center of Moscow signaled, to some, Russia’s attempt to own Ukraine’s history.

The statue caused consternation among Ukrainians. In 2016, a 52-foot statue of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, considered a saintly ruler by Ukrainians and Russians alike, was unveiled in Moscow. In recent years, commemorations in Russia of Kyivan Rus’ history have increased in prominence and scale. Putin himself recently wrote an article claiming Russians and Ukrainians are “ one people – a single whole.” This concept of a single people derives from the history of “Kyivan Rus” – the medieval federation that included parts of modern-day Ukraine and Russia and had as its center present day Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. In 2008 Putin’s then-spokesman, Vladislav Surkov, claimed that “ Ukraine is not a state.” The intention of these policies was to establish a dominant Russia and later strip Ukraine of an identity as an independent, sovereign nation.Ī similar ploy has been used to downplay Ukrainian independence in the 21st century. And it was backed by czarist policies dating from the 18th century that suppressed the use of the Ukrainian language and culture. The use of this term strengthened the idea that Ukraine was a junior member of the empire. Ukraine today comprises 44 million people and is the second-largest nation by area in Europe.īut for centuries, within the Russian Empire, Ukraine was known as “ Malorossiya” or “Little Russia.” Understanding this helps explain Putin’s actions, and how he leans into this view of Ukraine to advance his agenda. As scholars of the politics and culture of Ukraine and Russia, we know that underpinning Putin’s goal is Russia’s historical view of Ukraine as a part of its greater empire, which at one time ranged from present-day Poland to the Russian Far East.

Rejoin empire or keep alliance