2
" La sfârșitul lui august (1991 n.n.), la scurt timp după ce Parlamentul ucrainean votase în favoarea independenței, Elțin își instruise purtătorul de cuvânt să anunțe că, dacă Ucraina și alte republici își declarau independența, atunci Rusia avea dreptul de a deschide discuția despre granițele ei cu aceste state. Purtătorul de cuvânt al lui Elțin a subliniat că Peninsula Crimeea și regiunile estice ale Ucrainei, inclusiv regiunea minieră Donbass, ar fi putut face subiectul unei asemenea discuții. Dacă Ucraina insista să devină independentă, atunci urma să se confrunte cu o amenințare: împărțirea teritoriului ei.
Elțin a trimis o delegație deosebit de importantă, condusă de vicepreședintele său, generalul Alexandr Ruțkoi, ca să forțeze Ucraina să-și retragă declarația. Dar ucrainenii s-au ținut tari pe poziții, iar Ruțkoi s-a întors la Moscova cu mâna goală. Șantajul eșuase, iar Elțin nu avea nici ambiția politică, nici resursele necesare pentru a-și duce amenințarea la bun sfârșit. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
17
" Like many post-Soviet countries, during its first years of independence Ukraine underwent a major political crisis caused by economic decline and social dislocation and focused on relations between the presidency and parliament, both institutions having been created in the political turmoil of the last years of the Soviet Union. Russia resolved the conflict in September 1993 when President Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire on the Russian parliament building and the Russian authorities arrested Russia’s vice president and the head of parliament, both accused of instigating a coup against the president. Yeltsin’s advisers rewrote the constitution to limit the power of parliament, turning it into something more of a rubber stamp than an active agent in the Russian political scene. Ukraine resolved the emerging conflict between the president and parliament with a compromise. President Kravchuk agreed to call early presidential elections, which he lost, and in the summer of 1994 he peacefully transferred power to his successor, Leonid Kuchma, the former prime minister and erstwhile rocket designer heading Europe’s largest missile factory. Throughout the tumultuous 1990s, Ukraine not only managed its first transfer of power between two rivals for the presidency but also maintained competitive politics and created legal foundations for a viable democracy. In 1996, President Kuchma rewrote the Soviet-era constitution, but he did so together with parliament, which secured a major role for itself in the Ukrainian political process. One of the main reasons for Ukraine’s success as a democracy was its regional diversity—a legacy of both distant and more recent history that translated into political, economic, and cultural differences articulated in parliament and settled by negotiation in the political arena. The industrialized east became a stronghold of the revived Communist Party. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
18
" As often happens with former colonial administrators, a strong inferiority complex afflicted the Kyiv elites vis-à-vis their Russian counterparts, and they initially followed models developed in Russia to deal with their own political, social, and cultural challenges. It took them a while to realize that the Russian models did not work in Ukraine. Ukraine was different. Nowhere was this clearer than in the Ukrainian religious scene. By 1992, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which accounted for 60 percent of all Orthodox communities in the former Soviet Union, had split four ways: there were Greek Catholics who had emerged from the underground, Orthodox who remained under Moscow’s jurisdiction, adherents of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Kyiv Patriarchate, and, finally, the Autocephalous (self-ruling) Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which had its roots in the 1920s and also did not recognize the authority of Moscow. "
― Serhii Plokhy , The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine