Comment by Alex2037
11 hours ago
>saying Kazakhstan is independent... that's rich. The moment Kazakh government thinks about denouncing russian as official language, putin will send a new government
at the time of the empire's collapse, Putin was essentially a nobody. Yeltsin and the oligarchs didn't really give a fuck about Kazakhstan, Ukraine, the Baltics, and the rest. they were truly and unconditionally independent, and Russia, given its humiliating defeat in Chechnya, couldn't do shit about it even if it wanted to (which it didn't).
Oh, they gave a lot of fucks. They ensured russian language has a special status in Ukrainian constitution, for example, despite freedom of speech and non-discrimination were already there. They ensured the presidential candidate with strong nationalistic views, arguing for severing ties with russia, won't make it to elections. They financed political parties pulling Ukraine back to russia.
There might've been a temporary loss of russian grip on Ukraine in those turbulent times, but that was just a tiny blip on the scale of whole timeline