[jb: An informative point of view re Ukraine]. From Quora
Timofey Vorobyov · Follow lives in Lviv, Ukraine Updated Dec 22 Are Ethnic Russians indigenous to the Eastern Ukraine? No. Same as to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The ethnic Russian majority in the East of Ukraine (correction: ethnic Russians have a majority only and specifically in several big industrial cities of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, not overall) is a direct result of the Russian Imperial and, to a larger degree, Soviet colonization policies, mainly: Holodomor, which effectively worked as an ethnic cleansing there. Once a large part of the indigenous Ukrainian population was starved to death, outright killed or deported to Siberia for refusing to join the collective farms, they were replaced by ethnic Russians from the poorest areas of Russia. Russification. Not only ethnic Ukrainians were coerced or stimulated to speak Russian, but ethnic Russians were summoned to work as teachers, middle management, military, police and other important po...
