Btw, despite Russia obviously having ulterior motives like any good superpower, it's important to remember that their worries over the Russian minority in Ukraine are quite legit.
The current revolution/opposition forces have strong far-right groups inside them with obvious violent tendencies.
Considering the history of the ex-Soviet bloc and Europe in general, anything from disorganized persecution to forcing Russians out of the country to even smallscale ethnic cleansings are all perfectely realistic scenarios.
This is especially the case since Janukovitsh and his gang were considered to be pro-Russian, and Ukraine is heading towards an economic collapse, which is always a situation that can easily breed violence.
There's something like 8 million Russians inside Ukraine. Historically you can easily say that Crimea has always been more Russia than Ukraine. It was gifted to Ukraine in the Soviet era, and I'm sure the Russians have regretted this for the last 20 years. Russia has also spent billions to keep Ukraine financially afloat through cheap loans and cheap energy
Note that I'm not really defending Putins rhetorics and Russias generally aggressive style of diplomacy is IMO just stupid and arcane.
However, considering everything that ties Russian interest to Ukraine, people are making way too much of the fact that Russia has no intention of just letting the Ukrainians do what ever the hell they want. Every country in Russias position would get involved and try to use pretty much every way they can to influence what's going on in there.
It's really just the way they do it that's generally stupid and unconstructive a lot of the time.
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