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"As somebody who travels to that part of the world four times a year..."

That's fascinating. I have head similar stories from Ukrainian immigrants here. It's too bad there is that enmity between them...they are about the same ethnicity with only religion dividing them right?

they are about the same ethnicity with only religion dividing them right? Yes and no. Both Russians and Ukrainians consider themselves to be East Slavs. However over the centuries they have mixed with other groups. Russians have various amounts of Finnish and Tatar blood. Ukrainians have mixed with various Steppe people in ancient times, Turks and Poles in more modern days.

About 65% of Ukraine belongs to the Eastern Orthodox Church, the same as Russia. The Western third of Ukraine is primarily Uniate Catholic. The owe allegiance to Rome, while keeping a lot of the Orthodox liturgy.

Russian and Ukrainian languages are similar. Both use the cyrillic alphabet. In the East its heavily mixed with Russian, in the west with Polish borrowings.

Stalin murdered 6 million or more Ukrainians in 1933 with the complicity of Walter Duranty and his employer the NY Times. Duranty got a Pulitzer Prize for praising Stalin.

The Ukrainians have a good reason to fear and hate the KGB. I was hopeful Putin was more of a nationalist who was just going after the oligarch pirates but he appears to be another tyrant.