Maybe see that before we turn in at 'night'...
This from another trusted venue:
Isn't Ukraine as divided as the US? Half of them want to be part of Russia
Not any more, and not for the past year or so.
Eastern Ukraine (the Donets River and Donets Ridge coal region called the "Donbas"), is heavily populated with people of Russian rather than Ukrainian descent, and to a lesser extent so are many people in and near Odessa. They had been resistant to Ukrainian nationalists in years past. However, polls in the last two years have indicated a strong shift of opinion as Ukraine has done stunningly better than Russia economically and politically democratically. I expect that shift in opinion amongst Russians is part of the reason for this invasion.
Crimea is geograhically, historically, and culturally isolated from the rest of Ukraine. It was a Turkic and significantly Jewish region when Czarist Russia conquered it in the Crimean War era. Stalin exiled much of its original populations to the East and settled many Russians there. At the time the USSR shattered it was part of Ukraine through Soviet era bureaucratic manipulation, and it might will have a long term different future from Ukraine, although my Russian friend Ylena tells me even the Russians of Crimea, cut off from the world and with a collapse of the tourist trade, have had it with Putin.
Excluding Crimea, I doubt more than 10% of Ukrainians now support a return to Russian control.
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