More than anything, I think, Kharkov should be the one to be returned to Russia.THe oil money could transform Kharkov. I read that it was the third biggest urban center of the USSR but if you see Kharkov now, it is very dilapidated and clearly lacking in investments. Driving from Kharkov to Belgorod in Russia, which is nearly tenth smaller in population is just like flying from Bucharest to Budapest- from Third World to First World.The refurbishing that have been given to the Russian major cities lately will transform Kharkov. I'm thinking along the lines of Yekaterinburg, Rostov na Donu or even the much smaller in population but classier Far Eastern cities like Khabarovsk & Vladivostok....
Well-said.
You're both being naive and greedy. Typical situation regarding national resources: when farmers 'own' the land, it usually only means the top-soil. If oil, gas or other resources are discovered underneath, foreign investors are likely to have plenty of legal means to mine the land, while providing only minimal compensation to the farmers or villages. There might be some local investment, access roads and other infrastructure, or a few local jobs, but that is only a tiny fraction compared to the profit that the investors get from the resource.
Although it's completely normal for investors to seek out opportunities to capture as much wealth as they can, in this case the towns have obvious economic incentives to remain part of the Ukraine:
1) Kiev is physically closer on the map.
2) Ukraine is much smaller than Russia, so the same town is a larger proportion of the whole country. Local leaders would have more political influence, and less likely to have their needs ignored.
3) Moscow's economic policy is strongly anti-EU, while Kiev has been trying to increase trade with the EU.
Russia's only hope of providing a better deal would be as part of a propaganda show, where they simply shower the towns with redistributed money to convince the locals that they made the right decision to join Russia. But before that happens, Russia keeps sending plain-clothes rebels to show them how dangerous and unstable the "Kiev Junta" is.