I'm sure you have heard such statements as "Russia invaded Ukraine", "Russia invaded Crimea"...
It is completely understantandable that Ukrainians say such thing. Well, they are not going to admit that Crimean or Donbass people prefer to be Russian than Ukrainian. It is easy to understand that.
It was predictable that NATO officials, think tanks, and payrolled analysts, journalists, etc. would also say that, as they are completely involved in their neo cold war campaign. If you want to check NATO's doble standards regarding self-determination right, you can find it here.
But the truth is, as I always say about this, it doesn't take a Nobel prize winner to understand this map of the elections in Ukraine in 2010: there are two different countries inside the present Ukraine borders.
It is fascinating how some Westerners (read NATO and Bilderbergians) give and take legitimity of elections depending of what people choose: it is "legitimate", "democratic", "free" to vote pro-EU, pro-NATO, but it is "illegitimate", "undemocratic", to vote pro-Russian. Pro-Russian votes are, for these people, illegitimate. And that's the scary thing: when you decide that something is illegitimate, you can ignore it, supress it, abolish it. Citizens of east Ukraine voted pro-Russian, so it means they voted "illegitimate" and their vote can be dismissed.
It is quite disgusting but simptomatic to read how the Donbass region is depicted in the Wikipedia entry: "Surveys of regional identities in Ukraine have shown that around 40% of Donbass residents claim to have a "Soviet identity". Roman Horbyk of Södertörn University wrote that in the 20th century, "[a]s peasants from all surrounding regions were flooding its then busy mines and plants on the border of ethnically Ukrainian and Russian territories", "incomplete and archaic institutions" prevented Donbass residents from "acquiring a notably strong modern urban – and also national – new identity"." (Is there any similiar entry about any other country or region in Wikipedia? If instead of pro-Russian, we were talking about muslims, this entry would be surely qualified as racist, xenophobe...).
The Ukranian conflict is not so difficult to understand. The current borders of Ukraine include territories that have or had a majority of other nationalities. For example, the West of Ukraine was previously Poland. Crimea, in fact, was a part of the Russian SSR until it was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Their views of the Eastern and the Western part of Ukraine about international politics are completely opposed. There are two different countries inside the current borders of Ukraine. You could arguee it was unfair that Yanukovich was "imposed" to the West of Ukraine, but as unfair as Tymoshenko being "imposed" to the East of Ukraine. In such cases, only partition is a real solution. Definitely not imposing one sides's wish over the other's. Who opposes the only real solution? Who is then the imperialist?
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