GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
Lol, they have the exact same POV breh. The differences are mostly subjective. It's a failure of our educational system to think the world can be divided between those with "Western" values and everyone else. It's a false distinction. Power and national interests are the only values that exist. Now, what one considers in their national interests might differ from person to person, culture to culture, nation to nation. But chief among them is maintaining what I'd call the national mythology - the ideas, stories, narrative (cultural, social, religious, political, historical) with which the people identify on a truly fundamental level. Once that part of their psyche is activated, and politicians are experts at doing so, there is no turning back and people are capable of ignoring or justifying almost anything. For many Russians, especially the elite, their belief that Ukraine is Russian is as fundamental to their identity as the US belief in its historical identity as the defender/beacon of freedom. They've been beating that drum for literally hundreds of years. But as strongly as they believe in the idea of "reunification" as righting historical wrongs, most Ukrainians will point out that ethnically they may have descended from the same Rurik dynasty (9th century), that they have always maintained their own separate social, political, cultural, linguistic and religious identities. They've been fighting this battle for literally hundreds of years.
