This one map helps explain Ukraine’s protests
Ukraine has been wracked by protests for two-plus weeks over President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a deal for closer integration with the European Union. Thousands of protesters in the capital city of Kiev are calling for Yanukovych to step down.
This is a potentially big moment for Ukraine, as well as for Europe: Russian President Vladimir Putin had been pressuring Yanukovych to quit the EU deal and join with a Moscow-led trade union of former Soviet states instead. Will Ukraine’s future be with Russia or with Europe?
What’s happening in Ukraine is complicated and driven by many factors: the country’s history as an unhappy component of the Soviet Union, its deep economic woes, a sense of cultural fondness for the West, wide discontent with government corruption, two decades of divided politics and a sense that Yanukovych caved to Putin.
No single datapoint could capture or explain all of that. But the map below comes perhaps as close as anything could. It shows Ukraine, color-coded by the country’s major ethnic and linguistic divisions. Below, I explain why this map is so important and why it helps to tell Ukraine’s story. The short version: Ukraine’s politics have long been divided into two major factions by the country’s demographics. What’s happening right now is in many ways a product of that division, which has never really been reconciled.
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/12/09/this-one-map-helps-explain-ukraines-protests