EuroMaidan Revolution
Mykola Riabchuk: Ukraine, not ready for divorce
In 2010, the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych scandalized his countrymen by saying — facetiously — that the next time the Donbas region, on the mainland northeast of Crimea, expressed an eagerness to secede, we shouldn’t stop it. He was recalling a moment in 2004 when the local elite of the Ukrainian southeast, watching in horror as the Orange Revolution played out in Kiev, summoned a congress and threatened to quit Ukraine. It never happened, of course. The people didn’t want it, and Ukrainian law forbade it.