Putin’s Biggest Mistake? Unable to Grasp Ukraine’s Developing National Identity

The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian government in February 2022 has so far had the opposite effect from what Russian President Vladimir Putin had anticipated.

Putin’s invasion has brought together the leaders and public of the majority of countries in Europe and promoted future NATO expansion, rather than widening political rifts in the West.

Putin also seems to believe that it will be easy to take over the Ukrainian capital and overthrow his government. Instead, Russian forces lost the Battle of Kyiv and suffered the humiliation of the Black Sea Fleet, leaving Putin to oversee the Victory Day celebrations on May 9, 2022. These victories, as well as the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers, forced Putin’s generals in Ukraine to change tactics and focus their attacks on the east and southeast of the country – areas that speak the same language and ethnic groups. Russia. The first results of the campaign to take over eastern Ukraine were disappointing for Putin. Moreover, the anger of the Ukrainian people and the effectiveness of the Ukrainian army are very different from what was expected. 3 Key Operational Benefits Gained From Staffing Technology

Most executive decisions are based on a combination of logical calculations and preconceived notions. Putin is not one.

One of his main beliefs is that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, an idea he has been speaking and writing about for years. This is an important part of why he announced that Russian troops would be accepted in Ukraine. 카지노사이트

To understand Putin’s innocence, one must examine his failure to understand the changes in how Ukrainian citizens have defined themselves since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Decision of Russia

Most of the time since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has seen significant regional differences in the level of support for Russian presidential candidates compared to pro-Western ones. This principle reflects the fact that many people living in the east and south of the country see themselves as united, culturally and politically, in Russia. People in western Ukraine, meanwhile, want to know more about Europe than Russia. Visible cleavages and voting in the presidential election masked an important set of changes, in which Ukraine is becoming more Ukrainian – language, race and nationality. Going back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, social scientists like myself have pointed out how the Ukrainian population, as a whole, is growing stronger in Russia. At the same time, a conscious Ukrainian national identity began to emerge.

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This trend has increased in 2013 and 2014, when the President of Ukraine, a friend of Russia, Viktor Yanukovych, chose to sign an agreement with the European Economic Union of the Eurasian led by Russia rather than the European Union. Yanukovych’s decision sparked mass protests, known as the Maidan Revolution, which forced Yanukovych to flee the country. Putin’s subsequent actions to take over Crimea and aid separatists in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine have fueled the country’s growing disillusionment with Russia and the desire of Ukrainians to look to western Europe. Volodymyr Kulyk, one of the most important scholars on Ukrainian identity and public attitudes towards Russia, argued in 2016 that a negative line separates those who join the West and those who maintain close ties eyes on Russia “went east” after 2014.

Political expert Elise Giuliano, an expert in ethnic identity politics, provided evidence in a 2018 paper that many ethnic Russians in the Donbass did not support the actions of pro-Russian separatists. Ukraine.

National Policy Deepens

The post-2014 growing support across Ukraine for a comprehensive national identity – based on Ukrainian citizenship rather than ethnic identity – is the most important change. It provided a way to unite ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians in Ukraine. My most recent 카지노먹튀검증 research examines the dynamics of citizenship-based national identity in Ukraine and its relationship to ethnic and linguistic identity.

A number of statistical and qualitative data shows how strong Ukrainians’ interest in Russia is and how strong their ties with Ukrainian citizens are already before 2022, even among Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. . Many respondents saw a national identity based on citizenship as an important part of their identity. More participants in the survey viewed this form of national identity as an important or more important part of their identity than those who considered their region of residence, language or ethnicity. Respondents’ statements about the importance of being a Ukrainian citizen included statements such as “Because I love my country”; “I will not betray my country”; and “I am proud of Ukraine and I am a foreigner”.

This result also means that it is not contradictory that people perceive this type of national identity as an important part of their identity while they feel the same about ethnic identity, spoken language or region.

So I was not surprised to read about Oleksandr Vilkul’s defense of Ukrainian sovereignty. A powerful politician in southeastern Ukraine, Vilkul has advocated for Russian-speaking rights and closer ties with Russia. In early May 2022, the New York Times reported that the Russians had approached Vilkul to coordinate with the invading Russian army.

Vilkul’s answer? “Get lost.”