Muristek
Kaliningrad for Kiev: Territorial adjustments in Eastern Europe vis-à-vis the Ukraine crisis
As regrettable and tragic as the war in Ukraine is, the ensuing peace talks may yet be the catalyst to redress long-standing sources of acrimony in the region. The course of military developments is likely to bear a heavy influence on the final outcome on the Ukraine crisis. However, the following essay is a proposal for a radical but rigorous long-term solution. If there is one mundane fact that Russians and Ukrainians can agree on, it is that the mediaeval state of Kievan Rus is at some level ancestral to both Russia and Ukraine. Events over the centuries, from the Mongol-Turk invasion to the Bolshevik Revolution, cleaved the two apart, with Russia inheriting the classical line of descent. As its confused name suggests, Ukraine is a region on the periphery; a border-land. Its population composition reflects this buffer-state pedigree, with the north-west of the country transitionally differing from the south-east in terms of language, identity and politics. In view of this extant polarity and the irretrievable course of events following 2014, it seems inevitable that only a national divorce and major geopolitical surgery can ameliorate such irreconcilable differences. A stable and unified Ukraine capable of being administered through Helvetic cantons is not going to happen. Typically, the entropy of such conflicts leads to a partitioning (balkanisation) or confederation. In the case of Ukraine, a combination of the two is warranted.
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