National minorities of the Eastern and Western Ukraine in the XXI century: geopolitical measurement

Abstract

The article reveals the contradictory tendencies of ethnopolitical life in Ukraine at the beginning of the XXIst century, the destabilizing infl uence of the Russian Federation on the south-eastern regions in order to slow down the European vector of the country's movement. The features of interethnic relations in the Western regions of Ukraine, external and internal factors of the manifestations of separatism and the spread of ideas for the autonomy of areas of compact residence of national minorities are singled out. The author traces the causal relationships in the ethno-political sphere in the time-past-modern measurement. It was determined that ethnopolitical relations in Ukraine in the early 2000's were characterized by the absence of a state conception of ethnic policy. This opened up foreign policy paths to infl uence the national minorities of the border regions by neighboring states, stimulated the appearance of a number of destructive political organizations that spread the ideas of separatism in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, in the Crimean peninsula and Transcarpathia. Under the infl uence of Russian propaganda, the local population of the South-East, the Crimea, was an easy prey to ideologues of the «Russian world», who declared Ukraine as «an unnatural state education» doomed to a quick death.