Their army?.....................
Russia does not want the Ukraine.
Russia wants to splinter NATO.
That is all.
I have no problem with Ukraine as another new “Finland” in this era - a “neutral”.
Unfortunately I do not believe that alone is acceptable to Putin or that he would respect it.
On Russia-EU intercourse Putin is a hypocrite. He has no problem with a Russian-nationalist energy policy that wants strong economic ties to the rest of Europe but he wants Ukraine to not have such independent thinking for itself. He wants Ukraine to defer to Russian-nationalist interests. That would not be a neutral Ukriane.
This is the same reason many "sages" gave for not encouraging the Poles in 1980.
The real international reality is that Russia has the GDP of Spain. If the Europeans and the US simply twitched a muscle towards a military buildup Putin would fall quickly behind. The current state is simply a reflection of the complete lack of seriousness of Western governments who are more bothered that the imposition of their fantasies of medical tyranny and green fascism on their own populations is being interrupted by Putin than by any genuine interest in Ukraine.
Lastly, the Ukrainians are not any more likely to surrender to "the realities of international politics" now any more than the Poles were.
Cause Putin wants it all back. Also nobody is gonna do anything about it.
At Yalta, FDR tried to get Lvov (Lemberg) included in Poland but Stalin refused. Lvov was on the Ukrainian side of the Curzon Line and Stalin had troops on the ground there—the Western Allies didn’t. Probably the main reason FDR made the effort was he was thinking about the Polish-American vote in future elections.
Khrushchev was not born in Ukraine. He was born in Kalinovka Russia.
He grew up in Yuzovka which became Stalino and is now Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. He made his bones in Ukraine before and during The Great Patriotic War which is why most think he was Ukranian by birth.
What Russia (well Putin’s government anyway) wants is to take it over.
Not much “realism” in that article.
Russians regard the ancestor of the Russian state to be the Kievan Rus, that was an early medieval kingdom, and from which the name Russia is derived. It was dependent on trade with the Byzantine Empire and began to decline as the Byzantines declined. The Mongols finished off the Rus. So, the Russians feel an emotional/patriotic attachment to Ukraine as part of the Rus.
Lviv/Lvov is a different story. It was part of the Hapsburg Empire but was ethnically Polish. When Poland gained independence it was part of Poland. But British and French diplomats redrawing the map of Europe after WWI invented the "Curzon Line" as part of the new, independent Poland's boundary. They put Lvov on the Russian side. They later amended the Curzon Line to put Lvov back in Poland, but the damage had been done.
After Poland was created, the Soviets attacked, hoping to dominate Poland as Russia did before the War. It backfired. Poland won the war and conquered territory it had not been awarded.
Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland in the Molotov/Ribbentrop Treaty, Stalin getting everything East of the Curzon Line, including Lvov. He never gave it back.
But, the story is more complicated. After the Mongols were pushed back, the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania ruled Western Ukraine and Kiev. Lithuania merged with the Kingdom of Poland and Western Ukraine was part of Mitteleuropa for centuries. Russia took Kiev, but not parts West.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Poland was the subject of another of the corrupt bargains that have bedeviled the country. Russia, Austria and Prussia agreed on the Partitions of Poland. Russia got the lions share, including Western Ukraine. Lvov went to Austria. Poland disappeared from the map for two centuries.
It is true that at the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt and Churchill tried to persuade Stalin to give Lvov back to postwar Poland. However, at the time of Yalta the Russians had conquered all of Poland and almost all of Eastern Europe. They were 40 miles from Berlin. The Americans and Brits had no bargaining power on this point.
As we know, the Soviet Union created the fiction that it was nothing more than a union of independent republics. Lvov/Lviv went to the Ukraine republic. At the time, the commies had no idea that one day the Union would be dissolved and those republics really would be independent.
So, the bottom line is that Western Ukraine and Kiev really were part of the West for centuries. Eastern Ukraine was taken in war by the Russians from the Turks and Tatars. Very different histories and the people have very different mindsets.
Remarkably, in recent years many in Eastern Ukraine seems to have acquired a taste for living in a country that while very corrupt is more free and Western looking than Putin's Russia ruled as an authoritarian state by a dictator for life.
“Why does Ukraine matter?”
How the independent, sovereign, democratic nation of Ukraine ranks:
1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores;
2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves;
2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world’s reserves);
2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);
2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves;
3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)
4th in the world by the total value of natural resources;
7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)
Ukraine is an agricultural country:
1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;
3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world’s volume);
1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil;
2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports;
3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world;
4th largest producer of potatoes in the world;
5th largest rye producer in the world;
5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons);
8th place in the world in wheat exports;
9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs;
16th place in the world in cheese exports.
Ukraine can meet the food needs of 600 million people.
Ukraine is an industrialized country:
1st in Europe in ammonia production;
2-е Europe’s and 4th largest natural gas pipeline system in the world (142.5 bln cubic meters of gas throughput capacity in the EU);
3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants;
3rd place in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km);
3rd place in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment;
3rd largest iron exporter in the world
4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world;
4th world’s largest manufacturer of rocket launchers;
4th place in the world in clay exports
4th place in the world in titanium exports
8th place in the world in exports of ores and concentrates;
9th place in the world in exports of defence industry products;
10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons).
Source: Andriy Futey
Ukrainian Congress Committee of America Ukrainian World Congress - Свiтовий Конґрес Українців
Wow. I did not expect this to strike such a nerve but the debate is good to see!