The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact proved that Poland had been recreated too small at Versailles. Putin’s claim that Western (Catholic) Ukraine is historically different from Eastern (Orthodox) Ukraine mirrors Lenin offering Western Ukraine and Belarus to Poland at the Treaty of Riga. Poland declined the offer as it was required to defer to Britain and France approving its final borders. The result was a Poland that was too small to resist foreign aggression without its allies, who proved unwilling to defend it. A larger reformed greater Polish Commonwealth might have kept the peace in Europe longer. Unreported in the West until after the fall of the Soviet Union, peasants in Ukraine had marched to the Polish border to demand that Poland save them from Stalin. Stalin saw a relatively prosperous Poland as a threat to the Soviet Union in much the same way Putin saw relative prosperity in Ukraine as a threat to Russia.
Poland didn’t exist before WWI... Germany bumped right up against the Russian Empire.
This is flatout untrue. Ukraine was not a prosperous place. It was a backyards and corrupt country not any better than Russia.
What a mendacious pantload. Poland was too small? They stole land from almost all of their neighbors. Lands that they had no valid claim to except a few Poles lived there.