The Ukraine is a segmented country, trapped in between its past and future. For the past three decades, Ukrainian politics have been shadowed by the political elites in the Kremlin. On Feb 24, the love-and-hate relationship between the two countries finally reached its boiling point, with Russia launching a full-fledged military invasion in Ukraine.
The fall of the Iron Curtain paved the way for the emergence of nation states within the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) and its satellite states boundary. From a geopolitical standpoint, Ukraine is the biggest country bordering Russia's European frontier and, thus, a designated buffer state to keeping the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member countries at bay.
Analysing the crisis through the security and strategic perspectives is rather cliché. Most of the analyses are heavy-laden with the United States-led narrative on how the Kremlin's power hunger is tearing apart the balance of power in Europe.
In my opinion, to understand the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian crisis, one must uncover it through the context of cultural imperialism. The post-Soviet national identity was an exacerbating point that saw a deterioration in the relations between Kyiv and Moscow. From 1917 to 1989, the Soviet regime compelled its citizens to identify national identity with the USSR, transcending ethnicity, local tradition and religion. It managed to unite the entire country, at that time imbued by the romanticism of the proletariat revolution.
However, since the fall of the USSR, replacing the Soviet national identity with a similar one has been a burdensome task. The post-Soviet nation states began to construct their own national identities based on long-suppressed local values and traditions. Since his ascension to the No. 1 of the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin has shown his intention to create a hegemonic cultural system. It is not a secret how Putin has never regarded Ukraine as a country. To him, Ukrainians and Russians belong to the same political identity and ethnic group.
As president, Putin began to reinvigorate the nation's collective memory by embedding Russians' rich traditions and values in the education syllabi, religious life and films. Unfortunately, these grandeur cultural projects have encroached deep on its neighbour's territory. This explains why the Kremlin keeps meddling in Ukrain'e politics.
On the other hand, Ukraine is trying to break away from its historical and cultural ties with Mother Russia. Since the Maidan Revolution in 2013, Ukrainians have torn down hundreds of communist-era statues and changed the name of cities and streets that linked the country with its past.
The Ukrainian defiance to the Russian hegemony also encompasses language and religion. The Ukrainian language has been marginalised throughout the Romanov and the Soviet era. Although Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, it is only second fiddle to Russian throughout the decades since its independence in 1991.
In the context of ethnolinguistic, about two-thirds of Ukraine's citizens are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian. Another one-sixth of Ukrainians are Russian speakers and large numbers of ethnic Russians live around the Russia-Ukraine border, making up another one-sixth of the population.
The Ukrainians' strive for language nationalism reached a crescendo when the Ukrainian Parliament approved the 2017 law on education for Ukrainian to be used as the medium of instruction at all educational levels. Even though the law was received with negative criticism by Romania and Hungary, it was intended to curtail Russian language domination in Ukraine.
Religion has always been an integral part of Russian politics with an exception during the Soviet era. The Orthodox church had a fair share in the escalation of the crisis. In December 2018, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople consented to the creation of the new church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. For the first time since 1686, Ukraine is spiritually independent of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Russian Orthodox Church has played an important role in consolidating Putin's position in Russian politics. His close relationship with Orthodox church figures like Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov signifies that religious schism is partly a factor in the Russo-Ukrainian crisis.
The historical entanglement had produced thorny residues in Russia-Ukraine relations. While we are trying to understand the roots of animosity between two countries, we should never undermine the ethnic, religious and national identity factors as the casus belli of the conflict.
The writer is the executive director of NADI Centre, a consulting firm focused on strategic policy research and advocacy