#ukraine #crimea #russia #NATO #kharkiv #shale #dnieperriver

Ensure that Ukraine never joins the European Union or NATO

A statement posted by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday called for the new government in Ukraine to “urgently” adopt a new “federal constitution.”

That reads like code for reinventing Ukraine along the lines of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country that is a collection of loosely united mini-states.

It’s not hard to envision what that might look like in Moscow’s vision for Ukraine: an autonomous republic in the Russian-speaking east of the country along the lines of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Grouped perhaps around the cities of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Lugansk, such a mini-state would naturally look east to Moscow and – of course – ensure that Ukraine never joins the European Union or NATO.

For good measure, Russia might even push for Russian-speaking cities in the south of Ukraine

(such as Odessa, Kherson and Mykolaev)

to be added to this Russkaya Respublika,

or to be grouped into another mini-state over which the Kremlin would have influence.

A federal Ukraine would actually please many in the south of the country, who don’t quite share the desire shown in Donetsk and Lugansk (not to mention Crimea) for tighter ties with Moscow, but who also don’t feel well-represented by the new government in Kiev.

The post-revolutionary authorities alienated many of the country’s Russian speakers by using some of their first hours in power to overturn a Viktor Yanukovych-era law that allowed regions with large linguistic minorities to adopt second official languages (Russian) alongside Ukrainian.

Interim President Oleksander Turchynov wisely decided against signing the changes to the language law, but the damage was already done.

theglobeandmail.com

[Ukraine is a victim of its own and the West's stupidity. I mean, what did they expect Putin would do?]

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