Replies

The old government in Kiev was overthrown. Among other things, this was because the old government was pro-Russian and refused to sign a EU cooperation pact. Many speculate that the EU, our NGO’s & $5B foreign aid dollars and other opportunists supported ultranationalists to make the protests and Kiev take over happen. Anyway, the people in the other end of the country (the east), were always autonomous in the past. They can’t stand the new ultranational Kiev leadership which wants their autonomy forever gone. They see it as an illegal coup in a city in a faraway corner of the country. They also fear repression from the west. The ultranationalists have a hatred of the ethnic Russians in the east and vice versa.
Russia wants to protect the ethnic Russians from oppression and also wants to protect its borders, ports and influence that they had under the old Ukrainian government. The EU and the Ukrainians in the east fear that the Russians want to expand and take over the whole Ukraine and become a threat to Europe again.
It is essentially a federalist/nationalist crisis. Eastern wants to remain an autonomous part of Ukraine if possible. If not, they want to secede and join the Russian Federation. The US, EU and Ukrainians in the east want the whole country. A strong pro-EU national Ukrainian government regardless of what Ukrainians in the east want.

Most of the energy, natural resources and industry are in the east too. The west has little, is bankrupt and would be a burden to whoever has it. I doubt Russia even wants it. The EU doesn’t want the burden of it unless the east comes along too.

Excellent summary, FreeInWV. Brussels and Washington are trying to resurrect Cold War tensions to drum up support for a distant civil war that is none of our business. Ukraine is a basket case as a single entity, and will likely split between east and west at the Dnieper River. West Ukraine will naturally align with Poland, and East Ukraine with Russia. That looks like the most stable arrangement.