By Far Western I meant Galichina, and that exactly the region that Russians mean when they say Western Ukraine
My word, that doesn't even look much bigger than the East Coast of Scotland or the Highlands. They're not giving "Ukraine" much land are they when they talk about cutting everything away from the "West" of Ukraine, are they?
The more I hear about this I am all the more convinced that federalism is the answer for Ukraine to respect its constituent peoples' customs, dialects, right to self determination and all the rest of it, just as we in Scotland should do the same for our regions with devolution. As much of a separatist as I am even I understand the concept of "divide and rule", something Putin and Russia have been historical masters at. Scotland is essentially one nation, though we have pretty damned strong cultural differences (even completely different native languages) between our regions, like Ukraine. I'm starting to see Ukraine as being a lot like Germany in that regard. I'm not saying Ukraine should split into tiny pieces, I'm just seeing different constituent peoples in one nation, just like in Scotland, Wales and England. Note - I'm not comparing Ukraine to the UK, I'm comparing it to England or Scotland individually.
Yet I still can't abide some kind of federal Republic of Novorossiya in the East and South though - that land historically belonged to the Ukrainian Cossacks. The presence of ethnic Russians in that territory who are now carrying out a Russian nationalist insurgency is the result of Russian and later Soviet colonisation of Cossack and Ukrainian land. I feel the same way about "Novorossiya" that I do about California or Texas fighting their
white American irredentist "independence" wars in the 19th century. We can't just allow that territory to remain Russified, it's just not right and it accepts colonialism, that's why I would propose an autonomous East with special provision to protect Ukrainian/Ukrainian Cossack heritage over there and promote it.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that post-apartheid South Africa (an example of a partly de-colonised state) didn't allow completely autonomous Afrikaner nationalist regions/"republics" in Afrikaner-majority areas, instead they gave Afrikaans recognition as an official language but gave support to the native African languages of those regions. Why would Donbass be any different?