Ukraine’s name comes from an ancient Slavic word meaning “borderland”. And, for centuries, that is where these lands have been – on the edge of different empires, whether Russian, Polish, German, Habsburg or Lithuanian.

It is still being pulled between East and West, between Moscow and Brussels, and the revolution now taking place could yet strain the country’s seams. Ukraine’s revolution began in November, when President Viktor Yanukovich scrapped plans to sign a historic pact with the European Union and turned to his old ally Russia to prevent economic collapse.

Co-operation
President Vladimir Putin pledged to lend Ukraine $15 billion and slashed the price Kiev would pay for Russian gas, as part of a major agreement on economic co-operation. In doing so, he sought to bind Ukraine to Moscow and strengthen his push for a Eurasian Union of former Soviet states to enhance Russia’s influence over its neighbours, form a counterweight to the EU, and halt its expansion into the Kremlin’s traditional sphere of influence.

Students in Kiev and western Ukraine were the first to rally against what they saw as Yanukovich’s bid to preserve his own power by allowing Russia to re-assert domination over their country. The protests became far bigger when Yanukovich’s riot police severely beat student protesters in Kiev on November 30th.

Then, the relatively small pro-EU demonstrations became a mass movement involving radical activists for whom this was a revolutionary struggle to cleanse Ukraine of a corrupt and brutal regime, which embodied the poisonous effects of Russia’s continuing grip on the country.

Yanukovich’s bloody handling of the crisis has only hardened the position of – and increased support for –
ultra-nationalist groups such as Right Sector, which are fighting for a strong and fully sovereign Ukraine but have no interest in EU membership or its liberal outlook. Activist groups have dragged opposition parties in their wake through this uprising, highlighting the public’s dissatisfaction with the political class. Ukraine’s new leaders face the challenge of regaining their people’s trust, while satisfying groups such as Right Sector, and quashing a possible bid by Russian-backed politicians in eastern and southern regions to wreck their attempts to build a stable and prosperous state.

Those areas are now mimicking moves by anti-Yanukovich western provinces during the revolution to reject state authority, and radical pro-Russian groups – led by a new movement called Otpor (Resistance) – have asked local leaders to give them weapons to fight the revolutionaries.

Russian-hating
Yanukovich and Moscow’s officials and media are hammering home the message that Ukraine’s dissenters are Russian-hating fascists, in a bid to whip up fear of the opposition movement in Russophone eastern and southern areas.

There is no great public affection for Yanukovich or his cronies in the country, but Moscow-inspired terror of violent disorder and rampaging EU-backed ultra-nationalists could perhaps mobilise some Russian-speakers against the new order. Senior figures in Crimea have appealed to Putin for help and warned they might secede from Ukraine if Yanukovich were ousted.

With many Russian citizens and Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, this is where the Kremlin could most easily find a pretext for intervention in Ukraine. Moscow says it fought a 2008 war with Georgia to protect its citizens there, and now considers two of the country’s regions to be independent. Putin has suspended his loan to Ukraine, so the EU and IMF must quickly stabilise the finances of a near-bankrupt country at another crossroads in its turbulent history.