History is full of ironies.
Perhaps its latest trick on mankind is that a former KGB lieutenant colonel who laments the loss of the USSR, is now doing his best, as president of the Russian Federation, to destroy one of the Soviet Union's most memorable geographical constructions, 20th-century "the" Ukraine.
See, for example, "Khrushchev’s transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was unconstitutional – Putin."
Image from, with caption: Flag of Ukrainian SSR in 1949 image by António Martins and Victor Lomantsov; see also.