Appreciate your comments and perspective, McGrath. The ethnosociopolitical history of central, eastern and southeastern Europe and Eurasia is so ancient and so complex that it is hard for me to really understand.

I also don't understand what it means to be a semi-autonomous republic within a constitutional nation. Alien concept to me.

I don't like being so ignorant that I don't have enough information to form an opinion except from my own ethnocentric experience. No amount of lay reading of the long and complex history of central and eastern Europe has ever prepared me to have an informed opinion. It is a scary situation is all I know.