Can this become a 2nd "Velvet Revolution"?
"Prior to the twentieth century, there were no “Ukrainians” to speak of
-- at least not in an official sense. Tsarist Russia built its national
identity on the idea of Slavic unity, of which Ukraine was a fundamental
and inseparable part. Russia still traces its Orthodox inheritance to
Kievan Rus, the loose confederation of Slavic principalities that fell
to the Mongols in the thirteenth century.
Given how divided Ukraine is on these issues -- and how incompatible
Russia’s desires are with the European Union’s -- Ukraine ought to
consider applying a precedent from elsewhere in eastern Europe: deciding
the country’s fate by referendum. The 1993 partition of Czechoslovakia,
the so-called velvet divorce, was a mostly amicable division that was
ratified, and thus legitimized, by the country’s own citizens. "
[Foreign Affairs]
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