Giving up a land mass to avoid a political thorn in the future is not thinking long term imho. Thats like saying, lets give up Texas, so Democrats will always win US national election
If those two million votes were gone, Ukrainian nationalists could control the country’s future. What they don’t realize is a Greater Ukraine is as much of a pipe dream as Russian nationalists dreams of a Greater Russia. As multinational societies, the two countries face the challenge of harmoniously integrating peoples of different cultures and languages into the core state.