Who lost Ukraine? Ukraine lost Ukraine. Or more accurately, the Ukraine was lost a long time ago.

I am continually amazed at the hubris of our political class who think that if we had just gotten our policy right then the Ukraine wouldn't be disintegrating before our eyes.  That is ridiculous.  Ukraine was born 22 years ago with severe birth defects that only the strongest, most consistent leadership could have possibly overcome.  And of course Ukraine didn't get it.

A little history is in order: Before 1992, the Ukraine had only been an independent country for two or three years before the Soviets reconquered it.  Before that Russia had assembled the Ukraine out of its own lands and lands it took from the Ottoman's Tartar suzerains. The Ukraine suffered worse than any other part of the Soviet Union in the civil war and under Stalin who starved to death 8 million and murdered hundreds of thousands of civic leaders replacing them with ethnic Russians.  He exiled the Crimean Tartars and replaced them once again with ethnic Russians.  Then the Germans murdered the rest of the Ukrainian civic leadership plus all of its Jews while leveling the country. 

So the Ukraine that Stalin bequeathed to his successors was by design far larger than just the Ukrainian linguistic and ethnic state.  The eastern half of the country plus the Crimea were inhabited by Russian speakers, many of whom were shipped there to replace the missing Ukrainians.  When independence came they would be unpopular with the Ukrainians and would look towards Russia for protection, leadership and prosperity. And since the Ukraine got its independence in 1992, the political system has been paralyzed by this Stalin designed rift between Ukrainians and Russians as well as periodic Russian meddling leading to the failure to create the conditions for sustained economic growth.  The result is that the Ukraine is much poorer than Russia and it shows, leading Russian speakers to wonder out loud what the point of this 'so called' country is.

And being too far east, it couldn't leverage Europe the way that ethnically split Estonia and Latvia could.  Russians in those countries are much more quiescent for the simple reason that they have a much better deal economically and governmentally than they could get a home in large part because of access to the EU led to much better governance.  That was what the Ukraine needed to pull off over the last 22  years.  That it didn't is probably because absent a miracle, it couldn't.  

The best thing to happen to the Ukraine would be if it hived off the Russian speaking East and reconstituted itself as a linguistically and ethnically homogeneous state that would be roughly the size of Poland.  Then if it could get some space from Russian meddling it could possibly create a Ukrainian state that could command loyalty and respect.  

But that is the longest of long shots.  The more likely outcome is a progressive reintegration of more and more territory with Russia with the rump returning to a suzerain status - this time with mother Russia.

How the US or Europe could have realistically changed the path of such a badly constituted polity in the middle of the Eurasian heartland of Russia is beyond me.  This isn't our fault, it isn't even Russia's fault, it's the Ukraine's fault, not that they had much choice.  So lets not hear any more nonsense about what Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton did or did not do - they have plenty to answer for without pinning a hopeless cause on them.  The US is not Superman, hell in today's world we're not even Batman, and we can't save that which will not be saved.