In the name of the state
Russian nationalists deployed in Ukraine
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
To a large degree, the “Russian spring” in Ukraine in 2014 was fuelled and controlled by Russia. From the mid-2000s onwards, the Kremlin had built up a broad network of social organisations in Russia who were in close contact with groups in Ukraine or which had offshoots there. They all regarded the collapse of the Soviet Union as a development that needed to be reversed. When Ukraine finally threatened to slip away in 2014, they sounded the attack. All the threads of this apparently autonomous activity were being pulled by the presidential administration in Moscow. Decades-worth of ties between the men responsible for making the decisions provided the basis for the enmeshment of the state and non-civil society.
(Osteuropa 3-4/2019, pp. 103–121)