Commentary
With a population of 46 million and a vast territory that is rich in natural resources, Ukraine was the largest and most formidable of the states to secede from the Russian Federation, in 1991. About half the population is Russian-speaking. Curiously, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982, was actually born in Ukraine and retained a peculiar Ukrainian accent and mannerisms his whole life.
Russian history and the Orthodox religion began in the region, leading celebrated anti-Soviet dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, to insist that Ukraine is an integral part of Russia.
Indeed, for 500 years it was. But when the Ukrainians decided to leave the Russian Federation, the Kremlin promptly recognised the region’s sovereignty and territorial integrity….