At the risk of being a Monday-morning quarterback, in a piece (written a decade ago) I stressed the fragility of Soviet-created Ukraine as a geopolitical entity, and urged interested nations to look into the abyss -- the potential break-up of Ukraine -- rather than at the abyss looking back at them. In other words, few were those, ten years ago, who wanted to rock the boat by contemplating that "the" Ukraine would not hold together, but now the boat is rocking (back?) at them in more ways than one.
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My aged solution (it's been ten years since I suggested it -- I actually named it "options") to the current Ukraine crisis is now arguably even more debatable than it was in 2005; but my hope is that at least I alerted persons interested in a crucial part of the world of the potential dangers/sufferings ahead in an essentially Stalin-created, artificial space -- especially at the cost of the admirable people of different nationalities in that area.
Please note that in this piece I use "the" Ukraine as the fragile state in question; and Ukraine (without the definite article) as a possible option/way out of a predictable Ukrainian crisis -- predictable at least ten years ago. For an article on Stalin and Ukraine by a scholar, see Krotkin.
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