That's why I said 1942 I did not say it was relevant to the actual situation. It is relevant to the above comment though. Which in turn is not relevant. have I confused you now?

no, actually you cannot. This is a very important fact to understand about Ukraine. Most nations have emerged as a result of local residents being unified around some nation forming ideology, a national idea. Ukraine came to be in an entirely different fashion, by treaties and decrees of various dictators in the last century. In fact, Lenin, Stalin, Molotov, Ribbentrop and Khrushchev are the true "founding fathers" of Ukraine, they are responsible for Ukranian borders as they exist today. In all but a small central part of Ukraine, sometime in the last century people went to bed one day as Russian, Polish, Austrian or other nationals, and when they woke up they learned from the papers that they are now Ukrainian nationals. It was not the national identity that made borders, it was the other way around. This happened more than once and is not unusual, there was once "Yugoslavia", and "Czechoslovakia", etc. All these are Dr Moreau experiments, freakish and inherently unhealthy and unstable.

Yes, the Ukrainian national identity is not a myth, it does exist, but it is shared by only a part of the population, on a limited territory.

If they had another 50 years of peaceful co-existence there could have been a chance for them to unite most of the people within existing borders, but this outcome seems unlikely in view of recent events.

Kiev's government attempts to unite Ukraine by force will undoubtedly fail. These are 10th century methods. Yats probably imagines themselves a modern day Sviatoslavs and wants to unite the "true Slavic" people by a strong hand. Guess what, it is 21st century now, this method does not work any more.