Form: Short Note

ukrainians and poles are less different than ukrainians and russians. Which is the whole point. They want to join europe and be (prosperous) like the poles rather than join russia and be poor and oppressed like the russians.

Ukraine historically spead east into today’s southern russia – as evidenced by language and culture. Russians pushed south on the one hand, then the soviets immigrated ethnic russians into the don river valley – because (a) coal mins (b) oil and gas (c) river transport to the black sea on one hand and moscow on the other. So the east of ukraine was ‘russified’ in the same way agrarian blacks were moved to the norther cities by the Johnson administration (for the same reasons of ‘democratic-socialist colonization). Until 2014 we were (I was living there) considering dividing the country to rid itself of what the rest of the population considered ‘russians, lower class, and gangsters’ instead of the usual agrarian ukrainian population.
At present everyone I know over there is willing to die to the last soul in order to prevent capture by Russia. WHy? Because look at poland that integrated with europe vs belarus that maintained integration with Russia. You’d have to be nuts.