I grew up with friends an classmates who were children of Ukrainians who had emigrated to the UK during or in the wake of WWII. I found them to be people with a very well-developed national identity and feeling. The Ukrainian nation was forged in cycles of adversity. Mongol devastation and the rule of the Golden Horde, being conquered by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the rise of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, conquest by the Muscovite Tsardom. Always on the border, always fought over by neighbouring great powers - Poland, Russia, the Ottoman Empire and the Krim Tatars. Even now the same thing is happening, but they have their language, their traditions and they have their nationhood. Even if Putin were to win, and it looks less likely now than it did when the tank columns started rolling, the Ukrainian people will still have their nationhood.
I grew up with friends an classmates who were children of Ukrainians who had emigrated to the UK during or in the wake of WWII. I found them to be people with a very well-developed national identity and feeling. The Ukrainian nation was forged in cycles of adversity. Mongol devastation and the rule of the Golden Horde, being conquered by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the rise of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, conquest by the Muscovite Tsardom. Always on the border, always fought over by neighbouring great powers - Poland, Russia, the Ottoman Empire and the Krim Tatars. Even now the same thing is happening, but they have their language, their traditions and they have their nationhood. Even if Putin were to win, and it looks less likely now than it did when the tank columns started rolling, the Ukrainian people will still have their nationhood.
Given that Ukrainian postmen, bank workers and waiters are picking up assault rifles, that seems unlikely. Knuckling under to thuggery, on whatever scale, is rarely a good thing.
