Russia’s Changing Identity: In Search of a Role in the 21st Century

... collapse was the splitting of the core of the ancient Russian state and the emergence, virtually for the first time in modern history, of independent Ukrainian and Belarusian states. 2 The process of Russo-Ukrainian separation has been particularly painful.... ... that a Ukrainian state whose sovereignty it immediately recognized in 1991 could have a government seeking integration into NATO and the European Union, limit the use of the Russian language, and actively promote the “nationalization” of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The arrival of just such a regime in 2014 as the result of revolution in Ukraine led to Russia seizing the Crimean Peninsula ...