Conflict between pro-Europe western and pro-Russia eastern Ukrainians started at the beginning of the 1990s and remained non-violent for 25 years. Western or eastern presidents usually won elections every 4-5 years. In 2004 there was the electoral ‘Orange’ revolution and the western Ukrainian majority prevailed over Russian minorities of the east, as Ukraine remained a centralized state. In 2014 war started with Russians in Donbass, while Crimea declared a ‘de facto’ independence and was annexed to Russia without any violence. In February 2022, Russia invaded eastern Ukraine (Novorossiya) and a war started between the two countries. At Minsk Kiev government granted only administrative autonomy (an asymmetric integration) to the Russians of the east, that rejected it. Conflict resolution projects are: exchange (between Russian Crimea and Ukrainian Novorossiya without Kiev in Nato), symmetric integration (federalism in Ukraine), single-nation separation (of Crimea and part of Novorossiya, through a referendum). If no peace agreement is reached, a territorial compromise could emerge between the two countries (with an uncertain frontier), while solutions like unilateral dominion or subversion (through a coup d’état) are less likely. Zelensky and Biden applied a ‘politically correct’ diplomacy, that discourages conflict resolution, and rejected both real-politik of the Cold War, and the liberal project of world order of the 1900s and early 2000s.
