mai said:
Historically Novorossia never was referred as Ukraine until the Ukrainian SSR. |
First, Russia did not 'conquer' Crimea in late February:
They were invited to protect UKR citizens by UKR's legal President, following an illegal coup.
While doing this, locals organized an independence referendum, in line with sentiment they had historically demonstrated, and in line with the international law recognition of right of self-determination. Russia recognized that vote and allowed them to accede to Russia per their wishes.
The right of self-determination is understood as being balanced by or subject to the laws/norms of the sovereign state ruling that territory. But the illegal Kiev junta (not meeting Constitutional requirement for impeaching the President) had already illegally gutted the Constitutional Court, which is the only body competent to rule on matters related to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, per the Ukrainian Constitution... Thus there never was any valid act by sovereign Ukraine against, or over-ruling, the referendum, which international law by default recognizes the right to, UNLESS over-ruled by the over-arching sovereignty, which didn't happen here.
This aspect is glossed over my most Western media, apparently because it introduces "inconvenient details" whose implications aren't desired. If Western countries had a problem with Russia's reasoning, they had and have full opportunity to dispute it: Russia made it's position clear from the beginning on non-recognition of the coup's legitimacy, not taking any action for nearly a week... Yet Russia's polite diplomatic approach to the issue was simply ignored and swept under the rug by the West, revelling in their moment of "victory". The US does not even attempt to dispute the legal issue, they just claim to ascribe legitimacy to the coup on some vague supra-legal basis.
Regardless of what the US wishes to recognize, it is not incomprehensible that many Ukrainian citizens in fact take seriously the legal processes laid out by their Constitution, and don't consider illegal violations of them to be a legitimate basis of government, and thus will organize and resist against any groups attempting to illegally impose their power by force. This is reflected by the large #'s of police and military, including top commanders, who sided with the Crimea and Donbass against the junta. Realistically, nobody has any large desire for, much less belief in the viability of, returning the previous Yanukovych Presidential regime to power, but that doesn't change the fact the Kiev junta is seen as a revolution outside the previous legal norm, and thus any other group of citizens has just as much right to attempt to steer events in their own desired "revolutionary" direction, not conceding any monopoly on legiticy or force to the coup regime.
Secondly,
Novorussia was not a Ukrainian territory conquered by Imperial Russia, but rather was conquered from the Crimean Khanate. The area was known as the Wild Lands because it was depopulated due to the continual slave-raiding of the Khanate. Alot of Ukrainians later moved into this area along with Russians, but this was conscious migration to a Russian province, just as other areas of Russia, including all the way to Siberia and the Far East, were settled by Ukrainian migrants... Ignoring these details to use the formula "Ukraine is where ethnic Ukrainians live" (why not Canada too?) simply is ignoring actual historical boundaries, with Novorussia not being associated to Kiev until by act of the Soviet Communists... Who seem a strange authority to depend upon, given the tendency to associate modern Russia with the crimes of the Soviet Communists (particularly the ethnic Georgian Stalin, AKA Ioseb Jughashvili).
What's weird, as I've learned and understood:
Alot of cities in Novorussia now have alternate Ukrainian names that were ahistorically imposed, despite them being founded and named in Russian, and everybody who moved there being aware of the real name and capable of using it, whether within standard Russian, Ukrainian, or Surzyk conversation. ...Surzyk being seen as an unofficial blend of Russian and Ukrainian that exists in a plurality of variations rather than one standardized form, yet "it" is as much the authentic language of most residents of Ukraine, Ukrainian historically not existing in a binary exclusion to Russian, but rather in a continuously varying continuum with "standard Russian"... With 'standard Ukrainian' only later being politically imposed.
Relatedly, the imposition of 'standard Ukrainian' (and Ukrainian identity to go along with it) clashed with another ethnicity and language known as Rusyn, in the mountains near Hungary. This region was one of the most recent to join the borders of Ukraine, having long been ruled by Hungary (and a significant ethnic Hungarian minority continues to live here). Rusyn is most closely related to Ukrainian, yet the Rusyn people, while embracing a "fraternal identiy" equally inclusive of Russian as of "Ukrainian", reject their assimilation into a "Ukrainian" construct, insisting on their own unique identity while Ukrainian nationalist dogma does not recognize that and insists they are (ethnic) "Ukrainian". That is highly ironic because Ukrainian national ideology itself struggled to assert itself as an actual "language", as opposed to dialect of Russian, yet is happy to assert the same dominance over Rusyns that they claim to be victimized by the more populace standard Russian. I believe similar micro-ethnos exist along the northern and north-east borders of Ukraine, albeit with less cohesive resistance to Ukrainianization.
