ABSTRACT
On the contrary, Putin casted the war in Ukraine as an existential battle between Russia and the West, which wanted to wipe out Russia from the globe and grab its vast natural resources. The Kremlin presents this patronage as a factor in the consolidation of Russia, but as the war continues, it may, on the contrary, become a factor of split between the patron regions and the occupied territories under patronage. The war has once again confirmed the monolithic nature of the center-regional relationship in Russia. Mobilization will, with high probability, further strengthen this gap of small ethnic regions in the number of war deaths from the metropolitan centers. Even before the war began, the experts have emphasized Ukraine's national resilience and noted that Despite military conflict and an increasingly adversarial relationship with Russia, Ukraine has largely maintained its democratic reforms thanks to its resilience and determination to decide its own future.
