At a time when some commentators in Moscow are talking about seizing parts of Ukraine, their counterparts in Kyiv are asking whether Moscow can hold the Russian Far East, highlighting the longstanding ties between Ukraine and that region and recalling speculations during the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1960s.
To Ukrainians, the area between Vladivostok, Nakhodka and Khabarovsk is known as the “green triangle” (“zelenyi klin”) because that is a region to which thousands of Ukrainians moved in the decades before World War I to escape famine conditions at home, satisfy their land hunger, and help the Russian Empire hold its conquests there.
Ethnic Ukrainians in that region have played an important role ever since, not only providing much of the agricultural workforce, but attracting the attention of outside powers. During the Sino-Soviet conflict of the late 1960s, Beijing sought to win them and Ukraine itself to its side – or at least was famously criticized by Moscow for supposedly doing so.
