Explain Ukrainian politics to me

[BundouYMB]

There's a large cultural gap between eastern Ukraine, where Russian is the dominate language and there is a high cultural affinity towards Russia, and western Ukraine where Ukrainian is the dominant language.

Both sides believe the other discriminates against them. During Soviet times Russian was promoted and the government attempted to minimize the usage of Ukrainian in official documents, road signs, ect. Since the fall of the Soviet Union many Russian-speakers feel the opposite has happened, with instances of Ukrainian-only road signs in overwhelmingly Russian-speaking areas, ect.

This is the pivotal divide that politics are oriented around.

Political parties themselves are corrupt, oligarchic, personalistic, and almost uniformly have vague / nonexistent ideologies in the characteristic post-communist eastern-European way (if you're familiar with politics in countries like Bulgaria or Slovakia you'll understand what I mean.)

Elections since independence have been mostly free, although there have been cases of vote buying, ect. due to the corrupt nature of the politics.

The Ukrainian civil war was sparked by wide spread protests against softly-pro-Russian President Yanukovych after a large number of corruption scandals were unveiled, eventually leading to him being overthrown. The protests were of course oriented in the western part of the country and in overwhelmingly pro-Russian areas there remained strong opposition to the "coup." This prompted Russia to opportunistically step in to "defend" certain Russian-speaking provinces in eastern Ukraine.

Because the most Russian-speaking province is now under Russian control, and voting could not even take place everywhere in the remaining Russian-speaking provinces, the last election resulted in a President from western Ukraine and a parliament dominated by parties oriented towards western Ukraine (parliament however remains fractured between many different parties from western Ukraine.)

In conclusion you should attempt to understand Ukrainian politics through these lenses in this order: 1). Ukrainian-speaking vs. Russian-speaking 2). by understanding the various corrupt parties ties to businesses and where their oligarchic leaders financial interests lie.

(Note: this a summary and does not dive into the nuances of the subject. Feel free to ask me if you have any more questions though!)