The International Business Times quotes Transatlantic Relations Program Senior Fellow Adrian Karatnycky on how Ukrainians are split politically regarding the crisis in their country:
Stoking this longing for the good old days, and for Russia as the Soviet Union’s successor, was part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda, said Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who also provides risk analysis to investors in Ukraine.
“It is nostalgia, so it’s not really based on fact, people forget about the absence of commodities,” he said. “The shelves were empty, so … you couldn’t get products, you couldn’t get high-quality footwear, you couldn’t get high-quality clothing, so there were all sorts of trade- offs.”
Things aren’t as bad as that in the economically depressed east of Ukraine today, but Karatnycky said it was unclear how bad the economy could become because no one knows how far Putin will go — and such instability would drive away investors.