In 2003, the then Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, authored a book titled “Ukraine Is Not Russia,” formulating the basic principle of Ukrainian identity – being different from Russia. In the subsequent years, Ukrainian politicians continued to implement this principle, which culminated in the installment of a radically pro-Western and anti-Russian government on the back of a Western-supported coup in 2014 The new government promised to bring Ukraine closer to Europe, however, eight years later the nation ranks as the second poorest European country amid deindustrialization and depopulation. In economic terms, it is increasingly less like its eastern neighbor, too.

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