The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (4th edition) (Repost)

Why the ‘unexpected nation’? Most obviously, the emergence of an independent Ukrainian state in 1991 came as a great surprise in the chancelleries, universities and boardrooms of the West –a surprise that many are still adjusting to. There were also very real reasons why Ukraine was then considered to be an unlikely candidate as a new nation, given its pronounced patterns of ethnic, linguistic, religious and regional diversity. However, an unexpected nation is still a nation –no more and no less than many others. The 2014 crisis showed that the elite of Putin’s Russia clearly thought otherwise (as outlined in Chapter 13). To them, Ukraine simply does not exist, or Ukrainians and Russians are one nation, or its ‘Russian-lite’parts should be sub-divided from the rest. Putin could have stopped at the annexation of Crimea, but did not. He was unlikely to stop with half of the economic wastelands of the Donbas under his proxies’control. His broader aim was to make the rest of Ukraine a dysfunctional state. At the time of rewriting, Ukraine was facing economic collapse, and not enough had changed politically, but on this key existential question Putin seemed to have failed. Ukraine was more united after the crisis than before.