That all depends on whether the US manages to come up with a deal that’s acceptable to Russia. There is a very real scenario where Russia simply decides to take over all of Ukraine once the AFU fighting capacity collapses. It’s also worth noting that eastern regions are the ones where most of the industry, farm land, and resources are. So, the west isn’t going to be much of a prize to begin with.
Also hypothetically US/western attempts to start a contra style insurgency maybe be harder to start in east where there are more Russian first language people(not that that necessarily means tendency to support russia over the west, the original Azov(before the mass recruitment since the start of the hot war for example were primarily russian-first language speakers) and a higher % of people for voted for the more pro-russian parties over the pro-EU/west ones(at least before the last freeish election before the coup), making the west less desirable if russia was concerned with dealing with said attempts
before the mass recruitment since the start of the hot war for example were primarily russian-first language speakers
Before the war barely anyone outside the very far west of Ukraine spoke Ukrainian as a first language, even nowadays most rapid ukrainian refugees still speak russian as their first language and actually have to learn ukrainian. Using language/reported ethnicity will not give you a clear picture of how people in eastern and southern ukraine feel (like Bad Empanada claiming that because 60% something of Donbass called itself ukrainian in 2001, that means evul ruzzia is doing colonialism, mind you there is the legacy of the Ukrainian SSR and opposed to that is the NAFO SS Galicia based Ukraine and both sides use “Ukrainian” as identifier).
That all depends on whether the US manages to come up with a deal that’s acceptable to Russia. There is a very real scenario where Russia simply decides to take over all of Ukraine once the AFU fighting capacity collapses. It’s also worth noting that eastern regions are the ones where most of the industry, farm land, and resources are. So, the west isn’t going to be much of a prize to begin with.
Also hypothetically US/western attempts to start a contra style insurgency maybe be harder to start in east where there are more Russian first language people(not that that necessarily means tendency to support russia over the west, the original Azov(before the mass recruitment since the start of the hot war for example were primarily russian-first language speakers) and a higher % of people for voted for the more pro-russian parties over the pro-EU/west ones(at least before the last freeish election before the coup), making the west less desirable if russia was concerned with dealing with said attempts
I think you got east/west flipped, but yes
Before the war barely anyone outside the very far west of Ukraine spoke Ukrainian as a first language, even nowadays most rapid ukrainian refugees still speak russian as their first language and actually have to learn ukrainian. Using language/reported ethnicity will not give you a clear picture of how people in eastern and southern ukraine feel (like Bad Empanada claiming that because 60% something of Donbass called itself ukrainian in 2001, that means evul ruzzia is doing colonialism, mind you there is the legacy of the Ukrainian SSR and opposed to that is the NAFO SS Galicia based Ukraine and both sides use “Ukrainian” as identifier).