There are two competing stories about what’s happening in Ukraine. They’re both right.
washingtonpost.com
The human story: Angry citizens and a strongman president
This is probably the version you're more familiar with. It portrays the crisis as pro-democracy, pro-European protesters challenging an increasingly corrupt and authoritarian government. This story is much easier to understand (that doesn't make it wrong, of course), particularly if you don't happen to have a lot of background knowledge about Ukraine, which most people don't. It conveys the crisis in human, relatable terms. This narrative is most favored by activists, both within Ukraine and abroad, and by Western conflict journalists covering the protests.
The story goes like this: In 2004, a Ukrainian politician named Viktor Yanukovych ran for president and "won" amid allegations of fraud, sparking international pressure to re-do the vote and wide protests – which became known as the "Orange Revolution." Yanukovych lost in the second round of voting. But he ran again in 2010, won, and has been increasingly seen as corrupt and with worrying authoritarian tendencies.
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The structural story: Demographics and an identity crisis
This version of events is less exciting and more complicated, but it takes a much wider and more systematic view, which is probably why it's most often expressed by political scientists and analysts. Here's the idea: Ukraine has been divided by a national identity crisis since its 1991 independence. Partly this divide is demographic (see the map above), but it has much more to do with figuring out what kind of country Ukraine wants to be. Ukrainians themselves disagree on this; that disagreement has shaped their politics, up to and including this current crisis.
The story of Ukraine's national identity crisis has its roots in Russian conquests about 250 years ago. Russian rulers from Catherine the Great to Joseph Stalin wanted to "Russify" the eastern half of Ukraine, which is rich in natural resources and fertile farmland, by shipping in lots of ethnic Russians and passing laws to encourage people there to speak Russian rather than Ukrainian.
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