Ukraine defined as cleft country with two different cultures.

The author discusses the existence of both Western and Orthodox culture in Ukraine as an example of recent events relating to the clash of civilizations. He mentions the 1994 presidential elections, in particular, in which the non-nationalist candidate won. On the whole, these details about Ukraine’s situation help Huntington to illustrate his argument about cleft countries. In 1992, one-third of Russians in the western part of Ukraine said they suffered from anti-Russian animosity, while in Kiev, in the east, only ten percent did. This reflects the fact that Ukraine does not suffer from ethnic polarization, as much as the dominance of different cultures in different regions. This means that Russians are not discriminated against in the country as a whole, but rather only in those areas where Western culture is more dominant. Ukrainians are not pitting themselves, as an ethnicity, against Russians; they are struggling against Russian culture in those areas that identify more with Western culture.