Ukraine has never had stable borders, nor has it been a longstanding independent nation state. In fact, for hundreds of years under the czars and commissars alike, Ukraine was at best a vassal state and mostly a provincial satrapy of Moscow. Its current borders were actually drawn to precision by Communist apparatchiks during the Soviet era and thereafter embraced by the Kiev government that emerged in 1991 when the Soviet Union suddenly evaporated.

Ukraine's history can be summarized as follows:

700 or so years as a meandering set of borders in search of a country (1200 AD to 1922);

69 years as an administrative appendage of totalitarian Soviet rulers in Moscow, who purged Tartars and replanted Russians in the eastern regions along the way;

23 years as a happenstance nation-state that fell into existence when the biggest and most evil empire in history collapsed overnight (1991–2014); and

7 years as a pretext for Washington interventionists, neocons and anti-Trump Dems to rekindle cold war fears, the better to keep hideously swollen national security budgets firmly in place.

Yet these Foxified Republican pols and neocons blather on about "weakness" and phony threats to our national security. Let's see the extent of that threat.