Hey guess what?
The South had referendums, too, and the North did not accept them.
A referendum is great, but freedom can only be purchased in blood. Why should the Ukraine separatists receive any treatment that is better than the Confederates received?
For one thing, they weren’t “separatists” since the people are Russian ethnics and Russian speakers and the area had been considered part of Russia until new borders were carelessly drawn (at which time provisions were made for referenda in the future). “Ukraine” is a sort of badly assembled, made-up country.
Also, Kyiv and Moscow have historically been at odds. Kyievan Rus was the center of Russian language and culture from about the 9th century to the 13th century, when the Mongol invasions destroyed it and the power center of the Rus moved to Moscow, which had been a secondary and not very important settlement during the earlier years. And since then, Moscow has dominated in terms of culture and power, partially because Ukraine is essentially a border region itself - in fact, the name “Ukraine” means “borderland” - that is, the border between Western Europe and the Slavic lands. It includes several states and regions (Belorus, etc.).
The reason it used to be called “the” Ukraine was because it meant “the borderland.” It declared its independence in 1991 and since then has wanted to be known simply as “Ukraine.” Like most new states that emerged in the 20th century, it had rather haphazardly drawn borders, and this is the source of today’s problem.
So we’ve gotten ourselves sunk into a border war that does not affect us in the least (well, the natural gas and other things affect the Biden family bottom line) and that has just spiraled ut of control mostly because of US rhetoric and inflammatory bumbling. I’m not even sure Biden is aware of what he’s doing with this situation, and he sure doesn’t understand any of the history of it.
Elon Musk just suggested a UN supervised referendum for those areas, and actually even Putin wanted to negotiate - but the Ukrainians refuse to do so. Why should they. If the war stops, so does the Uncle Sam gravy train.
The only thing I don’t understand is why Biden thinks this benefits him in any way. I’m sure he’s probably making money off it, but I don’t understand how he thinks it benefits him politically - except of course that the entire left (and the neocons) have for some reason glommed on to Ukraine as their big cause, almost on the level with transgenders…