re: #176 Gus

Also this:

“He has a discussion there about Big Russia and Little Russia — Ukraine,” Russian news wires quoted Putin as saying after laying a wreath in Moscow at the grave of Denikin, who is now portrayed as a Russian patriot. “He says that no one should be allowed to interfere in relations between us; they have always been the business of Russia itself.” (See TIME’s Person of the Year: Vladimir Putin.)

…

Putin’s words are seen as the latest in an ongoing volley of pointed warnings to the West not to meddle in Ukraine, which has such close historical and cultural ties to Russia that the Kremlin considers the country firmly within its sphere of interests.

Putin is not known for his tact when speaking of Russia’s western neighbor, which declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In April 2008, a source told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper how Putin described Ukraine to George Bush at a NATO meeting in Bucharest: “You don’t understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territories is Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from us.”