Ukraine is not about territory, it’s about identity

https://iai.tv/articles/ukraine-is-not-about-territory-its-about-identity-auid-2099

His talk of ‘unity’ was ideological code not for re-creating the Soviet Union out of nostalgia for the Marxist-Leninist state. It was code for legitimating his dream of an ethno-nationalist Orthodox Christian mega state, where the category ‘Ukrainian’ is reducible and subsumable all-the-way-down to the category ‘Russian’. Putin’s notion of unity – his ‘bad Hegelianism’ – is fascistic, insofar as it seeks the erasure of individuality and difference under the blanket of universality and identity.