Eurasianism, with its glorification of the Mongol Golden Horde and eastward orientation, tends to divorce Russia from its European heritage, a divorce that is incompatible with any drawing closer to Ukraine.

Geography and natural resources will motivate political conflict, but identity and national construction will determine what social cleavages can be exploited by local and foreign agents in that conflict.

Organic association and the principle of subsidiarity are the rescue of nations. They allow for the political articulation of common roots without alienating local cultural differentiation. They also permit overarching identities to be honored along with overlapping ones. Keeping this principle in mind, we may trace the history of relations between Moscow and Kyiv with an eye to how it could have been, and may yet, be applied.