After a day digesting the ancient and modern situation, I've come to a conclusion that might be comfortable.
I don't know how diverged e.g. the Scythians were from the Amyrgians (of whom I'd never heard of until yesterday), but it is clear that they distinguished one from another. However, would an Athenian distinguish between them? Would a Scythian distinguish between a Spartan and an Athenian?
It seems to me that there are no clear boundaries between "peoples" or "nations". For me a Han and a Manchu are both Chinese, but they might see a Polish Jew as no different than a Lithuanian Jew. And yet the Polish Jew from Loz will see his identity distinct from the Jew from Warsaw.
So back to the conflict at hand, from the perspective of Slavic history there is merit to considering the Ukrainian and Russian peoples as the same people or nation. From the perspective of wishing to live under different systems of values and authority, there is also merit to considering them as distinct. Note that the gift of Crim to Ukraine during the 1950s was "a gift from the Russian people to the Ukrainian people" so at that time the Russians were making a distinction between the two.
As usual when considering human relationships, it's complicated )). There's an old joke about the Irishmen talking about how close they are - until the end. You've probably heard it.
I don't know how diverged e.g. the Scythians were from the Amyrgians (of whom I'd never heard of until yesterday), but it is clear that they distinguished one from another. However, would an Athenian distinguish between them? Would a Scythian distinguish between a Spartan and an Athenian?
It seems to me that there are no clear boundaries between "peoples" or "nations". For me a Han and a Manchu are both Chinese, but they might see a Polish Jew as no different than a Lithuanian Jew. And yet the Polish Jew from Loz will see his identity distinct from the Jew from Warsaw.
So back to the conflict at hand, from the perspective of Slavic history there is merit to considering the Ukrainian and Russian peoples as the same people or nation. From the perspective of wishing to live under different systems of values and authority, there is also merit to considering them as distinct. Note that the gift of Crim to Ukraine during the 1950s was "a gift from the Russian people to the Ukrainian people" so at that time the Russians were making a distinction between the two.
As usual when considering human relationships, it's complicated )). There's an old joke about the Irishmen talking about how close they are - until the end. You've probably heard it.