Krasno Analysis 
<https://ccisf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Krasno-Analysis-Matlock-Ukraine-Dec.-2021-1.pdf>
 

Ukraine: Tragedy of a Nation Divided


December 14, 2021
By Jack F. Matlock, Jr. 

Interference by the United States and its NATO allies in Ukraine’s civil 
struggle has exacerbated the crisis within Ukraine, undermined the possibility 
of bringing the two easternmost provinces back under Kyiv’s control, and raised 
the specter of possible conflict between nuclear-armed powers. Furthermore, in 
denying that Russia has a “right” to oppose extension of a hostile military 
alliance to its national borders, the United States ignores its own history of 
declaring and enforcing for two centuries a sphere of influence in the Western 
hemisphere.

The fact is, Ukraine is a state but not yet a nation. In the thirty years of 
its independence, it has not yet found a leader who can unite its citizens in a 
shared concept of Ukrainian identity. Yes, Russia has interfered, but it is not 
Russian interference that created Ukrainian disunity but rather the haphazard 
way the country was assembled from parts that were not always mutually 
compatible.

The territory of the Ukrainian state claimed by the government in Kyiv was 
assembled, not by Ukrainians themselves but by outsiders, and took its present 
form following the end of World War II. To think of it as a traditional or 
primordial whole is absurd. This applies a fortiori to the two most recent 
additions to Ukraine—that of some eastern portions of interwar Poland and 
Czechoslovakia, annexed by Stalin at the end of the war, and the largely 
Russian-speaking Crimea, which was transferred from the Russian Socialist 
Federated Soviet Republic (RSFSR) well after the war, when Nikita Khrushchev 
controlled the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Since all constituent parts of the USSR were ruled from Moscow, it seemed at 
the time a paper transfer of no practical significance. (Even then, the city of 
Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, was subordinated directly 
to Moscow, not Kyiv.) Up to then, the Crimea had been considered an integral 
part of Russia since Catherine II “the Great” conquered it in the 18th century.

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