It's always been about Ukraine

Modern-day Ukraine sits on top of the historic Kievan Rus, the birthplace of Russian culture and history.  Russians who remember the Soviet period wax nostalgic about their vacations in the Crimea.  Many Russians have relatives living in modern-day Ukraine (and vice versa).  Russian and Ukrainian culture are two sides of the same coin.  The Orange Revolution of 2004 has always been about transformation in Russia; that is, if the Ukrainians can go pro-West, pro-NATO, pro-democracy (even with all of its imperfections), then so can Russia.  That is an existential threat to the authoritarian Russian regime.

Thus, when Matthew Yglesias writes:

I agree that Russia could plausibly engage in low-level subversion against the Ukrainian government, but Blake’s being way too generous to the “every day is Munich” crowd here. The trouble with appeasement at Munich wasn’t that Hitler followed up the absorption of the Sudetenland with a campaign of low-level subversion aimed at the remaining parts of Czechoslovakia. It’s that he followed it up with a full scale invasion of Prague, the dismemberment of the country, and then a new round of war aimed at Poland all of which was part of a deranged scheme of world conquest. If people don’t mean to conjure up images of tanks rolling into Kiev — or at a minimum, bombers in the sky above — when they talk about future Russian pressure on Ukraine, then they shouldn’t use inflammatory language about Munich and appeasement.

... I can't help but recall that "low-level subversion" is what Russia has been doing to Georgia for almost two decades.  And with the appropriate opening -- i.e., the US tied down in other conflicts, state coffers filled with petro-wealth, Western interests like Iran and nuclear non-pro taking precedence over the Caucasus, etc -- Russia was able to escalate from "low-level subversion" to full-fledged war, that is "bombers in the sky above."  Saakashvili surely provoked it, stupidly in my view, but that doesn't excuse a disproportionate response on the part of the Russians.

Low-level subversion has been the Russian strategy vis-a-vis Ukraine for some years now, and that has only been exacerbated since the Orange Revolution.  Case in point:

The Russian parliament continually laid claim to the Crimea and Sevastopol in the 1990s, the island of Tuzla in 2003 and to Sevastopol as recently as May l.

Ever since the NATO Bucharest summit in April, Russia has been ratcheting up its "low-level subers[ive]" pressure on neighboring West-friendly states like Ukraine and Georgia.  Having made a test case out of Georgia, I bet you a thousand bucks that the real pressure comes to bear on Ukraine because of all the reasons outlined in paragraph 1.  To Russians, Ukraine is Russia, sovereignty be damned.

So is this Munich?  No.  Is it indicative of a tectonic shift in European security?  Absolutely.

Comments

[Birdie]

Ahem, Kyivan Rus' is the birthplace of Ukrainian culture first and foremost. Kyiv is in Ukraine, and a long way from the Russian capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The term Rus' was coopted by the Muscovites who renamed Muscovy as Russia ("Rossiia" in Russian) and then proceeded to coopt the entire heritage of Ukraine's Kyivan Rus' past.

[Matt Stone]

This is an interesting and debatable view. Courses on Russian history taught in both the United States and Russia will start their curriculum with the Kievan Rus. While I am not an expert in early Slavic history, I don't believe there were distinct ethnic groupings of Ukrainian, Russian, Belarussian, etc in the 9thC AD.

I certainly won't discount the fact that Kyiv (Kiev) sits in modern-day Ukraine, not modern-day Russia. That does not necessarily imply that Kyiv (Kiev) has always been Ukrainian, if such an ethnic group existed exclusive to a Russian ethnic group, or that it hasn't played a major part in Russia's conception of itself and its history.

Quick check on Wikipedia, citing the Columbia Encyclopedia, the following is written: "From the historiographical point of view, Rus' polity is considered by some historians an early predecessor of three modern East Slavic nations: Belarus, Russia and Ukraine."