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Russia is unable to see Ukraine as anything other than a usurper of Russian territory. The ethnic Russian population, and all of Russia, thinks of Ukraine as an oblast and nothing else. The fact is, it’s very difficult for many Russians to disentangle their own history from Ukraine’s and acknowledge the equality and legitimacy of the Ukrainian culture alongside their own.
this is why even after centuries the russian orthodox 'church' has yet to even acknowledge the right of the ukrainian people to have their own equal patriarchate in the eastern orthodox communion...