It was the ethnic Russians who were probably on the receiving end of Ukrainian ‘affirmative action’ after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Sunnis of Iraq did not take kindly to losing plum jobs to Shias after the US removed Saddam.
***In both cases, if it was that important, they could have moved back to their respective original regions instead of trying to colonize. We have our own illegal colonization problem right here in the US. And there’s plenty of discussion of it rather than it being in the noise.
“they could have moved back to their respective original regions instead of trying to colonize.”
Arabs and Native Americans sometimes make similar arguments.
The areas now fought over belonged to the Turks who got much of them off the Byzantines. It was the Russian army that took them off the Turks in the 1790s I believe.
Poland I believe held most of Ukraine in the 18th Century.