Now you found the root of the problem in Ukraine too.
Instead of Shia and Sunni, we have three groups: Pro-Russian, Pro-Western and Ukrainian Independence.
And each group wants the other to have nothing.
Yanukovich nixed a simple association agreement with EU, which Nigel Farage warned about. That was because Russia and Pro-Russian forces forced (heavily influenced) him to do it. Which he openly admitted. Had he not done that, there would be no Euromaidan, and whoever wanted to be closer with EU could be closer to EU. Both pro western and pro russian sides could do their thing.
Instead he unleashed Berkut on the protestors and eventually got outsted in yet another revolution and coup (starting with Arab Spring a lot of those happened, but in Ukraine it’s like the norm, just pick a color and year).
And then the Pro Western mobs and Prob Russian mobs clashed. Pro Western mob burned people alive in Odessa which shocked the pro Russians (Party of Regions, later Opposition block). And yes the Pro western included a lot of hard line right wing nationalists a— eg Svoboda got 10% of the vote in 2012, and in the 90s a party literally named Socialist Nationalist Party had serious support, Yarosh and Right Sector were just one among many, the latest incarnation at the time, Azov Battallion and other battallions which formed openly admitted that 20% held basically “nazi beliefs”. (I could go on.) Bh it pro Russian also included hard supporters of USSR, which surely was viewed badly by Western Ukrainians whose ancestors faced holodomor at the hands of Stalin.
But to me the internal beliefs and rhetoric isn’t the main issue… Taliban and Hamas are Islamist etc. The main issue is what happens next. Do the white supremacists allow blacks to do their thing and only talk? Or do they use violence?
Well, we know what happened. They got control back in Kharkiv but anywhere with a land bridge to Russia the separatists got Russian support, just like the Pro West guys got NATO support. It became a proxy war between Russia and NATO. And we all know that leads to years of fighting as weapons and fighers pour in from both sides. Relations get worse and worse. Remember that 11 million people — quarter of Ukraine’s population — have relatives in the other country, the language and culture is extremely similar AND YET these mechanisms caused such a rift that they hate each other… these mechanisms of escalation and deescalation are the very thing we need to study. And we can’t do it if you decry whataboutism. Whataboutism is exactly what repeatability in science is all about.
Now the Pro Russian voters are disenfranchised from the country, pro Russian media and parties is banned, any opposition parties are banned too. The US and NATO backed governments in Ukraine have been indeed systematically embracing the Pro Western militias (even the neo nazi ones) while ripping their population away from Russian economy, language, culture etc. The USA and Britain would have long ago invaded “to protect its interests” as it did in Guatemala (for United Fruit Company), or sponsored a revolution as it did in Iran (for British Petroleum). And Russia did the latter. It is no different than what USA did in Nicaragua and around the world. It could have been stopped and resolved by the international community and diplomacy. France and Germany almost did it but USA and Britain blocked it.
It is these universally repeating mechanisms and patterns that we have to study and how to prevent them from causing problems. That is what science and engineering systematically does and why our technology eliminated so many problems that used to plague it. But in Politics, this isnt done because we tend to focus on simplistiv explanations in only one particular case (racism, sexism, russia bad, white supremacists bad, and yes even fascists bad etc.) without sitting down and cooperating. And the word to prevent and shut down any sort of systematic analysis of patterns across the entire data set, to discuss solutions, is “whataboutism”. You do it here!