historically, this is waaaaaay more accurate than the guardian and cbc reports i just read, although it glosses over the slavic pre-history of the region.

the slavs have been living in the region for millenia, but (until the middle ages) lived in decentralized farming communities rather than organized states. they often paid tribute to invaders, be they scythians or goths or huns or turks. they were also often either enslaved as soldiers or used as mercenaries, which brought them deep into eastern europe with the raids of other groups like alans, huns, goths and sarmatians. for all the talk of gothic raids at the fall of the empire, it was slavic speaking people that inherited central and south-eastern europe. macedonian, for example, is a slavic language - but it's a recent invader to the region, brought south mostly by bulgarians.

suggesting that the region is historically and ethnically tatar or turk or mongolian and that the russians were invaders is entirely equivalent to suggesting that the native americans are not real americans. these eastern groups set up brutal, colonial states based on the economic foundation of land expropriation and white slavery. it's not to justify the stalinist reaction, but it's to put it into it's proper historical context. if the descendants of the sioux one day rise to slaughter the descendants of the colonists, it would be hard to be particularly moralizing about it.

http://rt.com/news/crimea-facts-protests-politics-945/

so, when you see these white nationalist groups in the ukraine - and in russia as well - you have to understand it in that context of the centuries of slavery that the indigenous slavic speaking peoples endured at the hands of the colonial turkic speaking peoples, how it completely destroyed their national identity and how their existing identity is constructed in large part as a reaction to their emancipatory struggle. it's a huge, huge thing (culturally) in the entire region. the crimean tatars are the precise targets of these groups, both in the ukraine and in russia.

to be a slav means to fight against the turkish oppressor, who gave them the name of "slave" to begin with.

so, this makes precisely no sense, except in terms of western propaganda designed to make it seem as though ukraine is united in opposition to russia.

"in soviet russia, white people oppressed".

not quite soviet russia. but the russia and ukraine of the middle ages, yes.