Taras Kuzio: Attitudes to Stalin show Ukrainians are not Russians
This photo taken on July 28, 2014 shows a placard depicting Adolf Hitler (L), Joseph Stalin (C) and Russian President Vladimir Putin displayed on the Maidan camp on Independence Square in Kyiv.
Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, likes to say that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. Such views are reminiscent of the Tsarist Russian Empire and negate Ukraine's recognition as a separate nation in the Soviet Union, whose collapse he laments as the "major geopolitical disaster" of the past century. Moscow, indeed, views the Ukrainian state as at best a legend or fantasy.
