Ukraine is internally too unstable, especially now that the orange coalition is basically dead.
Yushenko is politically weak, he most likely will not be reelected.
Julia Timoshenko seems to have taken a mildly pro-moscow stand in the whole affair sofar, leading to accusations of her being "bribed by moscow".
Problem is, the Estonians and Latvians and so on can rightly claim that their countries are theirs and the "Russians" (actually a mix of russians, ukrainians and pretty much everybody else) are foreigners.
Crimea, on the other hand, has been russian since Catherine the Great, and before that it was ruled by muslim Khans.
People there regard themselves as russian.
Problem is, while Estonians, Georgians and so on are distinct, non-slavic nationalities, the difference between russians and ukrainians is more gradual.
Simply put, Ukraine is a bit like a blurring zone Poland gradually fades into Russia.
"Real" Ukrainians live in Lviv or Tarnopol and are closer to Poles than to Russians in anything but religion (orthodox vs catholic). Ukrainians in Charkov, on the other hand, are hardly different from Russians.
So who is what in the Ukraine is more often a matter of self-definition than of heritage.
Not to mention Ukraine has a number of minorities which are neither, like lots of Jews, surprisingly many Greeks (both mainly in and around Odessa) and a lot of muslim/tartar peoples.
But why am I wasting words here?
It is absolutely sure that five minutes after I post, a certain Finn will make things quite simple again....
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