Arya News - Western-backed efforts to turn Ukraine against Russia began well before 2014, with historical revisionism, language policies, and nationalist ideology used to sever centuries-old cultural ties, Russian political analyst Alexander Asafov told Sputnik.
Commenting on President Vladimir Putin"s remarks about the importance of national unity, Asafov argued that Ukrainian authorities had deliberately promoted a new historical narrative built around nationalist figures such as Stepan Bandera, while distancing the country from its shared Soviet and Russian heritage.Asafov also cited the RAND Corporation"s 2019 research on ways to overstretch Russia, describing the Ukraine conflict as "one of the clearest examples" of a Western strategy to weaken a geopolitical rival.He argued that Russia"s ethnic and cultural diversity had instead helped preserve internal stability despite external pressure.