Invasion threat: could Russia and Ukraine become one country?

“Russia was stolen” from their territories in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin wrote in a worrying statement last July “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” -which can still be read on the official website of the Kremlin-. There he added that “True sovereignty of Ukraine is only possible in association with Russia”.

How did these statements resonate in the ears of the Ukrainian people? How much support would the people of Ukraine – “the poorest country in Europe”, according to Putin, give to the possibility of joining the powerful Russia? In his writing, the Russian president longs for the historic times of regional unity. Are Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians as interrelated as Scots, Welsh and English, as to form a single country?

In the West there is fear that the war of the pro-Russian separatists in the Ukrainian region of Donbass, which has been going on for eight years and cost 13,000 lives, is just a test bed for the advance of Moscow troops over the whole of Ukraine, as it did in 2014 in the Crimean peninsula.

“Today there is the threat that tomorrow there will be war”said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, adding that Kiev’s army was “Fully prepared” for combat.

Although the American president, Joe Biden, He warned Putin this week that there would be “strong measures” if Moscow launched a military occupation outside its border, “occupation” Y “frontera” they have a different meaning for Moscow than for Washington and Kiev. The word “occupation” does not appear in the dictionary that the Russian government uses to speak of Ukraine. He only applies it to what the Nazis and fascists did. From the earliest years of school, Russians learn that their country “Released” territories, never occupied them.

In the same way, regarding the idea of ​​”border”, as Putin wrote in his statement, they consider that “There is no historical basis” for “An idea of ​​the Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians.” In fact, the very word Ukraine means “border” in Russian, but because they considered it the country that marked the limit of the empire with the rest of Europe.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) used to say that “Russia can be an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both”, and the question that moves the needle to one side or the other is always Ukraine, which was once the “granary” or the “bakery” of Russia. The imperial vocation is green in times, like now, when the Russian president explicitly said that his desire is “Deal with great love” to Ukraine.

But it’s about an unrequited love. The latest survey by the independent institute Levada Center in Moscow showed that at the end of last year only 5% of those interviewed in Ukraine supported the idea of ​​forming a single state with Russia and basically they were Ukrainians of Russian origin in the east of the country. Two decades ago, the percentage reached 20% of Ukrainians.

The government of Kiev this week uploaded a meme on its Twitter account that in a few days added almost half a million “likes”. There he classifies different types of pain and the area of ​​the head most affected: migraine, hypertension, and stress. But the one that lights the whole head in red is “Living near Russia.”

To the headache of both peoples, the long regional history is replete with moments in which the boundary lines were drawn, widened or disappeared.

Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are all descendants of ancient Kiev Rus (9th to 13th century), which was the largest state in Europe, with its capital in Kiev. Moscow was then an area of ​​little importance, far from the metropolis. Y It was Prince Vladimir the Great (988-1015) who initiated the Christianization of the entire empire and put an end to the idolatrous paganism of the Slavs. This is how the Russian Orthodox Church was born in what is today the Ukrainian capital. And that is one of the strongest points of the Russians to invoke their unity with Ukraine.

To the headache of both peoples, the long regional history is replete with moments in which the boundary lines were drawn, widened or disappeared.

Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are all descendants of ancient Kiev Rus (9th to 13th century), which was the largest state in Europe, with its capital in Kiev. Moscow was then an area of ​​little importance, far from the metropolis. Y It was Prince Vladimir the Great (988-1015) who initiated the Christianization of the entire empire and put an end to the idolatrous paganism of the Slavs. This is how the Russian Orthodox Church was born in what is today the Ukrainian capital. And that is one of the strongest points of the Russians to invoke their unity with Ukraine.

But Ukraine’s great weakness is its economic situation, something that Putin seeks to exploit. And an eventual association with Russia could be a relief. This former Soviet republic with a number of inhabitants similar to Argentina, and twice the size of the province of Buenos Aires, it has almost half of its population below the poverty line.

Putin wrote: “The scale of deindustrialization and, in general, the degradation of the economy can be seen in an indicator such as electricity generation, which it has almost halved in Ukraine for 30 years. And finally, according to the IMF, in 2019, even before the coronavirus epidemic, the level of GDP per capita in Ukraine was below $ 4,000. This is below the Republic of Albania, the Republic of Moldova and the unrecognized Kosovo. Ukraine is now the poorest country in Europe”.

For Tetiana Gaiduk, Director of Communications for Truman Consultant, Ukraine, “The Russian threat is unfortunately something we are already used to living with and we do not rule out an invasion. But Ukraine is going to resist ”. The political analyst reminded LA NACION that the hashtag #UkrainiansWillResist (the Ukrainians will resist) is today the most popular search in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook.

Gaiduk concluded: “Russia invaded the Ukrainian Crimea in 2014 and started a war against our country. There is no alternative interpretation of this fact, because this is the modern history of Ukraine, which we are all witnessing. Russia is today an aggressor country”.

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