Peter Pomerantsev: Where is Ukraine?
An Ukrainian serviceman sits on an armoured personnel carrier as it passes a destroyed bridge during a patrol outside of the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, some 10 km north from Donetsk, on April 21.
One of the problems with Ukraine is that no one really knows where it is. For many people, not least Vladimir Putin, it's an extension of neo-tsarist Russia. For others it's a Central European state of frustrated blood-and-language nationalism which just needs the chance to build strong institutions to express its essence. The Nestor Group, a collection of Ukrainian thinktanks and intellectuals, has meanwhile concluded that Ukrainian value systems reject both the Russian model (deification of paternalistic authority) and the language-and-bureaucracy-makes-a-state logic of Central Europe.
