Ukraine.....

"A glimpse of Britain beavering away in an area deemed to be of no import. "The bastards were always as bad as one suspected and worse than one could have thought possible." Christopher Hill's take. Chamberlain's efforts to help Hitler to seize the Ukraine to destroy the Soviet Union, just as he had helped him to use the Sudetenland to destroy Czechoslovakia. In November 1938, Chamberlain asked Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, "What the position would be if Russia were to ask France for assistance on the grounds that a separatist movement in the Ukraine was provoked by Germany. M. Bonnet explained that French obligations towards Russia only came into force if there was a direct attack by Germany on Russian territory. Mr. Chamberlain said that he considered M. Bonnet's reply entirely satisfactory."

 Documents on British Foreign Policy, Series III, Vol. 3, Doc. No. 325, 24 November 1938, pp. 306-7 and Doc.
No. 500, 11-12 January 1939, pp. 524-5.

"...The question of the fate of the Ukraine has been posed in its full scope. A clear and definite slogan is necessary that corresponds to the new situation. In my opinion there can be at the present time only one such slogan: A united, free and independent workers' and peasants' Soviet Ukraine. ... But the independence of a United Ukraine would mean the separation of Soviet Ukraine from the USSR, the "friends" of the Kremlin will exclaim in chorus. What is so terrible about that? - we reply. The fervid worship of state boundaries is alien to us. We do not hold the position of a "united and indivisible" whole. After all, even the constitution of the USSR acknowledges the right of its component federated peoples to self-determination, that is, to separation. Thus, not even the incumbent Kremlin oligarchy dares to deny this principle. To be sure it remains only on paper. The slightest attempt to raise the question of an independent Ukraine openly would mean immediate execution on the charge of treason. But it is precisely this despicable equivocation, it is precisely this ruthless hounding of all free national thought that has led the toiling masses of the Ukraine, to an even greater degree than the masses of Great Russia, to look upon the rule of the Kremlin as monstrously oppressive. In the face of such an internal situation it is naturally impossible even to talk of Western Ukraine Voluntarily joining the USSR as it is at present constituted. Consequently, the unification of the Ukraine presupposes freeing the so-called Soviet Ukraine from the Stalinist boot. In this matter, too, the Bonapartist clique will reap what it has sown.
But wouldn't this mean the military weakening of the USSR? - the "friends" of the Kremlin will howl in horror. We reply that the weakening of the USSR is caused by those ever-growing centrifugal tendencies generated by the Bonapartist dictatorship. In the event of war the hatred of the masses for the ruling clique can lead to the collapse of all the social conquests of October. The source of defeatist moods is in the Kremlin. An independent Soviet Ukraine, on the other hand, would become, if only by virtue of its own interests, a mighty southwestern bulwark of the USSR. The sooner the present Bonapartist caste is undermined, upset, crushed and swept away, the firmer the defense of the Soviet Republic will become and the more certain its socialist future. ..." L Trotsky - Problem of the Ukraine (1939)


 If someone cleverer than me might digest the above let me know whether these two fellows are fools or knaves. Not a fan of conspiracy theories, not as a rule.  Hope of interest.