In an interview today with Interfax, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he believes that the eastern Ukrainian rebellion could be solved if the Ukrainian government would follow through on its promised constitutional reforms.
Lavrov insisted that the reforms require the “participation of all regions” in the Ukraine, but that all the ethnic Russian easterners really wanted was a measure of autonomy.
Lavrov warned he believes Ukraine is “a long way away from that goal” of reform, however, that Russia’s goal remains a unified Ukraine with increased federalism.
Russia has been pushing federalism in Ukraine for some time, and while Ukrainian officials have expressed support for the idea in principle, they’ve so far refused to follow through with concrete moves toward reform, and Ukrainian ultra-nationalist figures have made a point of their opposition to any regional autonomy, at least in the east.
