National minorities of the Eastern and Western Ukraine in the XXI century: geopolitical measurement.

The article reveals the contradictory tendencies of ethnopolitical life in Ukraine at the beginning of
the XXIst century, the destabilizing infl uence of the Russian Federation on the south-eastern regions in order to
slow down the European vector of the country’s movement. The features of interethnic relations in the Western
regions of Ukraine, external and internal factors of the manifestations of separatism and the spread of ideas for
the autonomy of areas of compact residence of national minorities are singled out. The author traces the causal
relationships in the ethno-political sphere in the time-past-modern measurement.
It was determined that ethnopolitical relations in Ukraine in the early 2000’s were characterized by
the absence of a state conception of ethnic policy. This opened up foreign policy paths to infl uence the national
minorities of the border regions by neighboring states, stimulated the appearance of a number of destructive
political organizations that spread the ideas of separatism in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, in the
Crimean peninsula and Transcarpathia. Under the infl uence of Russian propaganda, the local population of the
South-East, the Crimea, was an easy prey to ideologues of the «Russian world», who declared Ukraine as «an
unnatural state education» doomed to a quick death.