On loan when Russian forces took control of Crimea in 2014, the collection was assembled from four museums and represented fragments of the ancient empires that used the region as a trade crossroads.
Our interests are best served by the establishment and continuation of healthy, independent and progressive nation states -- both Russia and Ukraine; not two states at daggers drawn.
Kiev feels like a Russian city, architecturally and linguistically. But recent months brought subtle changes. The young consider speaking Ukrainian cool. Some older Ukrainians have adopted the attitude that Russia does not own the culture.
While Snyder is surely right to remind us that most Ukrainian nationalists aren’t fascists, as Putin claims, that doesn’t make them as democratic and freedom-loving as Snyder keeps telling us.
By invoking inflammatory slogans like “Putin is Hitler” and “Ukrainians are fascists”, both Russian and western leaders distort the realities of 21st Century Ukraine.
The most basic Ukrainian problem is not Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs—which no doubt exists—but the absence of a strong national consensus among Ukrainians.
Russia justifies its annexation of Crimea by pointing to NATO intervention in Kosovo. But the Kosovo War came after years of international buildup, and Kosovo wasn't annexed by another country immediately afterward.
