What's so bad about letting Ukraine split in 2?

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What's so bad about letting Ukraine split in 2?
Could hold a referendum with international oversight by area an let each region/county/whatever vote to either go be part of Russia or stay with Ukraine an be part of EU?

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This AIN'T St George.....

The vast majority of manufacturing industry is in the eastern and southern part of Ukraine. The rest of Ukraine is heavily agrarian. That means the major tax base is in the ethnic Russian sector of the country.

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LSURussian

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My man! Thanks for showing up!

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So? [Not a flame.] Are you saying the non-ethnic Russian sector of the country couldn't be self-sufficient? Honest question.

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I think he might be implying that it would be a delay of the inevitable. Its gonna be hard to separate one sector from the other without having a constant civil and cultural struggle between the two countries.

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Are you saying the non-ethnic Russian sector of the country couldn't be self-sufficient? Honest question.

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I don't know. Honest answer.

I know when I worked in Ukraine and I mentioned the possibility of "two" Ukraines as described in the OP, the ethnic Ukrainians would mention the lack of tax base in the larger, ethnic Ukrainian section of the country and most of the wealth in what would be the Russian, smaller sector.

They seemed to think that was an important consideration.

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Are you Russian

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Nope. "Made in the USA."

I've worked in Russia and many of the former Soviet Union Republics and in Eastern Europe for more than two decades.

When I first signed up for TigerDroppings I went through about 10 screen names with all of them being already taken.

So, out of frustration that "my" names were taken, I stopped to think what might not be duplicated by another LSU fan.

So I came up with the "Russian" part just to get a screen name that nobody else might have used. Big mistake. Everyone thinks I'm Russian (and I understand why, of course) but I'm not.

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We definatly need to nominate you for the poli board state department "Russian Division". Ambassador can be your working title until we think of something more dignified haha.

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I have a feeling you won't get many upvotes for your idea.

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Because Ukrainians on both sides of the "split" need Kyiv for their legitimacy. Kyiv is the place the first "Rusyn" state was born, Kyiv is where the "Baptism of the Slavs" occured, etc. They can't split, because they need Kyiv.

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That is an excellent point, furthermore drawing the line becomes complicated as certain populations centers would become isolated.

More importantly Eastern Ukrainians do not necessarily want to become part of Russia, they still think of themselves as Ukrainians even though they have trouble speaking the language. The elites in the East have more economic connections with Europe then those in the west. A large sector of the population are very sympathetic to Soviet nostalgia but they don't think of themselves as Russians. They lost power in the revolution and are looking for Russia to help them, but they are probably reticent about becoming part of Russia. The most important thing the new government should be doing right now is reaching out to Party of Regions members, before there really is Malo Russiya and Galicia as Putin supposedly put it.

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before there really is Malo Russiya

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"Myla" means "little" or "small" in Russian.

Ukraine has been referred to as "Myla Russiya" (Little Russia) for hundreds of years by the Russians.