Ukraine wasn’t persecuting ethnic Russians. It’s the other way round.
Before the Cold War era Stalin bussed thousands of settlers into Ukraine, viciously suppressed the Ukrainian languages, exterminated and starved millions, and forcibly relocated the Tatars... If Stalin hadn’t done that then the Bandera era of Nazi collaboration probably wouldn’t have happened. Ukraine was caught between two genocidal invaders and many thought that the Nazis were the lesser of two evils. Based on bitter experience.
But that was over 75 years ago. After Stalin died the Soviet Union started to be a lot less hostile to Ukraine, giving it administration of Crimea for example.
In the 80s, under Gorbachev, the Supreme Soviet granted even more to the Republics, so the Russian Federal Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), the Belorussian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR were three separate and equal republics, albeit all subservient to the Supreme Soviet within the Union of SSRs.
By 1993 Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were three independent countries that had signed multiple friendship agreements between each other, and agreed to keep their borders the same as under the USSR.
Ukraine consistently voted to maintain its sovereignty and territorial integrity along the Belovezha Accords borders but ALSO consistently voted to maintain close ties with Russia.
Ukraine has signed five treaties with Russia on that front, consistently elected pro Russian deputies, prime ministers and presidents, and Zelenskyy was welcomed on Russian TV in his comedian career.
Ukraine ALSO kept signing deals with Russia and China, and kept kicking the cam down the road on NATO and EU membership, just to keep Russia happy.
But none of that deterred Putin and Medvedev. They didn’t just mourn the loss of the Soviet Union, they bemoaned the decisions made by Stalin’s successors right from the gifting of Crimea thru the Helsinki agreement of 1975, and the FIRST Minsk agreement (the Belovezha Accords).
Putin wants Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic countries and the old Warsaw Pact region back under the thumb of Moscow like in Stalin’s time.
That’s got bugger all to do with NATO expansion. He’s a history nut who thinks Peter the Great and Stalin had the right idea.
NATO expansion is only a whinge for Putin because NATO would get in the way of him putting tanks in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.
If Medvedev and Putin hadn’t attempted to assassinate Yuschenko, hadn’t blackmailed Azarov, hadn’t paid Yanukovych to sell his country out and hadn’t invaded the Donbas and Crimea, all in service of this Chauvinist fantasy, the 2014-2016 bloodshed would never have happened.
Russia was such a serially abusive partner that eventually the general population of Ukraine kicked off - that was what started Euromaidan. Putin then used Euromaidan as an excuse to invade Crimea and the Donbas.
Even after that, Russia still had support in the South and East of Ukraine. The rest of Ukraine wasn’t going to tolerate a Russian backed hijack, and viewed these collaborators as utter traitors, and that’s how Maidan turned into a civil war in the Donbas.
By the end of 2020 that civil war was over. A few hundred recalcitrant paramilitaries on the Ukrainian side kept taking potshots at Putin’s little green men and their Ukrainian enablers but the civilian population was largely untouched.
“Persecuting ethnic Russians” is a Russian trope, like their definition of Nazi which Putin and the Kremlin confirmed is actually
Any Russian speaker in any ex SSR who refuses to accept that their country needs to cease all delusions of independence and liberty, and embrace their forced conversion into a client state of Putin’s empire, is a Nazi according to Putin’s philosophy. That’s been confirmed by Dugin, by Putin, by the Kremlin, and by the author of the genocide manual “What to do with Ukraine”.
Russia is persecuting ethnic Russians, along with any other population in Europe that isn’t willing to collaborate against their own interests in the service of realising Putin’s conquest vision.
How Ukrainian-origin leaders dominated the Soviet Union
“Suffice it to say that Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, whose party biography was most closely associated with Ukraine, led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) for almost 30 years,” Putin remarked.Poor little Ukraine was not the bastard stepchild you claim it to be. The Ukrainian Soviet Republic was elevated to the catbird seat in the Soviet Union and never looked back until our United State's machinations turned its avaricious and corrupt head.Nikita Khrushchev was born in a Russian village close to the Ukrainian border, but raised in Eastern Ukraine, which is now de facto ruled by pro-Russian rebels backed by Moscow.
In time, Khrushchev became the head of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. After Joseph Stalin's death, he consolidated power and led the Soviet state between 1953 and 1964.
While Khrushchev was ethnically Russian, he fell in love with Ukraine. There is a definite proof of that, which is the transfer of the Crimean Peninsula's regional management from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) to the Ukrainian SSR, which happened under Khrushchev.
"It was somewhat symbolic, somewhat trying to reshuffle the centralized system and also, full disclosure, Nikita Khrushchev was very fond of Ukraine, so I think to some degree it was also a personal gesture toward his favorite republic. He was ethnically Russian, but he really felt great affinity with Ukraine,” said Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of the former Soviet leader.
Leonid Brezhnev was born and raised in central Ukraine. Some official Soviet documents like his passport also listed his ethnicity as Ukrainian - but others believe he was of Russian descent. Brezhnev was one of Khruschev’s proteges and ruled the Soviet state between 1964 and 1982, the second longest-reigning communist leader of the state after Stalin.
Under his leadership, there were several Ukrainians running high offices from the defence ministry to the KGB. During his term, the Soviets reached an equal level with the US in terms of nuclear power and Moscow also gained a lot of leverage over Central and Eastern Europe. While Brezhnev's pragmatic approach helped the Soviets improve their international standing, his anti-reform agenda led to an eventual decline, an era known as Brezhnev Stagnation. After 1975, he mostly withdrew from active politics due to his declining health.
Konstantin Chernenko was another Ukrainian, who also reached the upper echelons of Soviet power. He led the communist state for a brief period from 1984 to 1985.
He rose in the communist party ranks thanks to the help of another Ukrainian, Brezhnev.
Mikhail Gorbachev, whose maternal family had Ukrainian descent and migrated from Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, succeeded Chernenko as the next general secretary of the ruling Soviet Communist Party.
Gorbachev established the office of the President of the Soviet Union in 1990. He was the first and the last president of the Soviets, overseeing the dissolution of the world's communist superpower. In total, he had ruled the Soviets from 1985 to 1991.
While Gorbachev is liked and praised by many in the Western world and some former Soviet republics for his glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction) policies, he remains a controversial figure in Russia today. He ran for the presidency in 1996, receiving 0.5 percent of the total vote.
Gorbachev, a reformist and pro-democracy supporter, provided occasional criticism of Putin's policies, describing the president's United Russia party as having "embodied the worst bureaucratic features of the Soviet Communist party".
But he also believes that Putin is the best man for Russia. “I am absolutely convinced that Putin protects Russia's interests better than anyone else,” he said in 2014.
He was also a critic of the West's Russia policy, which was conducted in an attitude of “triumphalism”, according to him. He warned the world that Ukrainian escalations could trigger a new Cold War, pointing out that increasing US-Russia tensions create “great concern”.
Ukraine banned Gorbachev from entering the country after he disclosed his support for Russia's annexation of Crimea.