Simon Jenkins (Britain should stay well out of Russia’s border dispute with Ukraine, 20 January) claims that Russia’s “border disputes” with Ukraine have “nothing whatsoever to do with Britain” – but it has everything to do with the more than 20,000 diaspora Ukrainians and Britons of Ukrainian descent who live in the UK, of whom I am one.
Mr Jenkins appears to be of the opinion that Ukrainian sovereignty is less important than the desire of those who govern Russia not to be humiliated on the international stage. This is incorrect. Ukraine is not and has never been an integral part of Russia: it is an independent nation with a separate language, history and religious and political traditions. It was, for centuries, under the colonial rule of Tsarist Russia (or the Habsburg empire, depending on the region) and then of the Soviet Union, suffered unspeakably at the hands of the Soviet government in the 1930s and was subjected to extreme cultural suppression in the 19th century.
