Oh, Crimea River!

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. For crimea a 2000 year history

for the Ukraine as a self identified state, to at least the middle ages, with the Kievan Rus state.

Fun fact. that was the first functioning democracy, as far as you can describe one, since Athens... it was destroyed by an invasion from the East. the Mongols. They brought some lovely things that did not exist before, as far as the record we know off, that have been internalized into the Russian psyche, and that is torture. I remember my instructor in the history of the period waxing romantically as to what might have happened if the Mongols never came? And if Kievan Russ evolved into a full democracy by the oh lets say 14th century... think Netherlands a few centuries later attracting the leading thinkers of the age.

The Crimea has been the punching bag of many an invasion, with their native population, the Tatars, having an identify that is longer than the US, and that is one ethnic group of many.

Russification, that is a tactic that goes to at least Peter the Great. This is what I predict Putin will use, since he's dusted off those methods.

Don't worry, our neocons do not even know the basics of that history. For them this is about the USSR and the renewal of the cold war that never ended. It did, but they would love to revive it.