I taught for a year at the Kiev-Mohyla University in 1993-94 and returned to Ukraine this June after an absence of twenty years. Things here have changed.
For one, the civil war between Eastern and Western Ukraine that was much talked about and feared in 1993 has at last broken out, but in a much-attenuated form from what was then feared. Actually, to call it a civil war is inaccurate. The separatists are limited to parts of the Donetsk and Luhanks Oblasts with the other boarder regions around Kharkiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv quiet. The movement is as much or more a product of direct Russian interference than it is of antipathy to the new government in Kiev with its hopeful turn to the West. No one considers the May 11 referenda declaring the independence of the Donetsk and Luhanks People’s Republics legitimate and the inhabitants of those regions are beginning to see the political and economic disaster that would follow from their implementation. Those who can are now voting with their feet, at least until the situation settles.
