Make Sense of Today by Looking Through History's Prism

In support of their independence from Russia, Ukrainians assert their "own history" prior to once being a part of Greater Russia. To that, I say, almost every state on Earth had its own histories before being incorporated into the nations they belong to today. Germany, Japan, Italy - each started out as collections of geographical regions, like the city-states of Athens, Ithaca, Sparta, etc., who clung to their singular identities until they combined to become the Greece we know today.

In the United States, Texas can legitimately claim to have had its own history before becoming part of this great nation; so can every other state in this union. Once each state became a part of the U.S., each of their singular histories became subservient to the history of the whole. 

Without defending Putin, I suggest that his obsession with Ukraine is similar to the obsession this nation had with Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, and the other states who quit the U.S. and formed the confederacy. It was a secession President Lincoln, and the states which elected him refused to recognize as legitimate. As a consequence of this secession, the Union pummelled the secessionist states, none so vigorously as the state of Virginia. 

In a lot of ways, Virginia was to the Confederacy what the Ukraine was to Russia. Its size, resources, and political importance made it critical to the visibility of the larger state. And, like the Ukraine, which bore the brunt of World War II, Virginia bore the brunt of America's Civil War. 

President Lincoln, himself, told General Sheridan to lay waste to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of the Confederacy, "until even a crow flying over, will have to carry his own provender." More battles were fought on Virginia soil during the Civil War than any other state in the Union. Likewise, the Ukraine became the central meeting place for the slaughter that became World War II. At the end of a single battle between the Germans and the Russians - the Battle for Kyiv - the Germans took 600,000 Russian soldiers prisoner and marched them to slave labor camps in Germany. Other great battles followed on Ukrainian soil - Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, and the bloody sieges of Odesa and Sevastopol. Russians bled a river defending the Ukraine from Hitler's Germany. 

Perhaps, Putin feels that Ukraine's place in Russian history is far more fundamental than any history Ukraine can muster on its own. This does not excuse his invasion of the Ukraine. It only gives it some perspective.