But support by Jews for the Maidan movement was much more salient. Four of the 82 protesters killed in Kyiv s Independence Square were Jewish, and a Jewish sotnia, or hundred a term, ironically, associated with Cossack pogromists defended the square against Yanukovych s uniformed goons.

Both ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians view the tenth century feudal state known as Kyiv Rus very favorably. Moreover, both groups share the seventeenth century Cossack warrior Bohdan Khmelnytskyi as their most popular historical figure, and both revile Stalin due to the famines caused by his forced collectivization of agriculture in the 1930's (whereas most ethnic Russians in Russia view Stalin as the heroic state savior of WWII).