Before it was an ordinary (somewhat poor) country. 17% of an ethnicity does not a casus belli make. Similar culture does not a casus belli make. This is kind of crazy reasoning, imagine applying it to Western Europe.
Do any you have any evidence for your claim regarding a strong geographical split between areas and protests in favor in closer ties with Russia (that are independent of Russian special forces operating on Ukranian soil)? Where have you read this? There is an ongoing information war, please be very careful about sources.
Also, the protests in favor of sticking with Europeanization were in the west and the counter-protests were in the east. Russia definitely had a political ground game going, but it’s no accident that they could only get it going in certain provinces. If they could have gotten it going in the capital, they would have.
ALSO also, I wasn’t saying that Russian actions were actually legitimate.
Agreeing with your main point, i’ll just point out that there were incipient protests in favor of the EU in the East, but 1) it’s really easy to quench a local action unsupported by the body of the protest, after which sane people would either shut up or join the main force, 2) the capital, built upon the Dnieper River, is hardly in the west, 3) there were anti-EU protests in Kyiv, which is partly why there was street-fighting (I mean, beside the Berkut).
And polarization had been present before December ’14, but it skyrocketed after.
???
Moved in with troops, yes. Russia had done political maneuvering so as to destabilize it, I grant.
They have much less traction to pull the same sorts of political maneuvers in Finland.
I am just trying to understand what timeline you had in mind. Did you mean before Yanukovich scuttled EU integration?
After. Before then, well, it wasn’t rock solid, but it wasn’t, so far as I know, abnormally unstable. Yes, Putin brought that about.
Before it was an ordinary (somewhat poor) country. 17% of an ethnicity does not a casus belli make. Similar culture does not a casus belli make. This is kind of crazy reasoning, imagine applying it to Western Europe.
Do any you have any evidence for your claim regarding a strong geographical split between areas and protests in favor in closer ties with Russia (that are independent of Russian special forces operating on Ukranian soil)? Where have you read this? There is an ongoing information war, please be very careful about sources.
This seems to be relevant evidence...
Also, the protests in favor of sticking with Europeanization were in the west and the counter-protests were in the east. Russia definitely had a political ground game going, but it’s no accident that they could only get it going in certain provinces. If they could have gotten it going in the capital, they would have.
ALSO also, I wasn’t saying that Russian actions were actually legitimate.
Agreeing with your main point, i’ll just point out that there were incipient protests in favor of the EU in the East, but 1) it’s really easy to quench a local action unsupported by the body of the protest, after which sane people would either shut up or join the main force, 2) the capital, built upon the Dnieper River, is hardly in the west, 3) there were anti-EU protests in Kyiv, which is partly why there was street-fighting (I mean, beside the Berkut).
And polarization had been present before December ’14, but it skyrocketed after.
So, where have you read about these protests?