Making sense of Ukraine

It’s a topic we would rather avoid, but the truth is that understanding Ukraine and the Russian build up there might be necessary to keep the peace in Europe. Even though I write as an Englishman, and the country is far closer to the Czechs than to my homeland, I think it’s a critical country for Europe’s development.

First, the simple analysis: Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, one of its richer parts, with rich agriculture and powerful industry in the Donbas region in the East. It broke away from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, and since then a series of struggles have taken place, most notably in the 2004 ‘Orange’ revolution, to establish political autonomy free of Russian control. In this…