https://doi.org/10.31648/ep.7216
This article analyzes critical challenges that impede the development of the Ukrainian state and that had contributed to Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 (in particular the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the occupation of Donbass, and potential conquest of other Ukrainian territories in the future). The analysis relies on the research conducted by renowned Ukrainian and foreign scholars who have identified watershed moments in Ukraine’s development that had undermined the state’s power and subsequently facilitated external aggression. The author argues that the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 was a catalyst for the Russian Federation’s longterm brutal policy toward the young Ukrainian state. These events exposed the problems experienced by Ukrainian regions and the entire state, which enabled Russia to quickly redraw the map of Ukraine. According to the author, the recent events in the Ukraine were hardly a surprise for historians. The fact that the Russian Federation poses a real threat to the territorial integrity of Ukraine has been long recognized by Ukrainian scholars and the global academic community. A number of factors destabilized the development and progress of the Ukrainian state, fueled separatist tendencies, and ultimately contributed to Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014. These include low levels of national education, including historical education; misunderstanding and contempt for national qualities and values (language, culture and history); insufficient knowledge of Ukraine’s difficult and tragic road to sovereignty and independence; weak attempts to protect national rights; differences in the civilizational orientation of western and eastern Ukraine; composition of the Ukrainian population – a disproportionally high percentage of national minorities relative to the indigenous population, which prompted the government to focus on the problems of other national groups at the expense of the indigenous people; the existence of vulnerabilities in the political, socio-economic, and cultural development of the Ukrainians that were exploited by the Russian propaganda with the aim of spreading false information about the Ukrainian government.
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