A little wrong to look that way though since (a) it was under USSR that the country got its current borders and shape on the map, and (b) the actual issue over which the conflict is going on is due to USSR-like foreign policy doctrine of Putin's Russia.
Yeah, as a Canadian, once you get a linguistic gap it really changes the political nature of a country. I mean, English Canada has the typical left-right tug-of-war, with the right going to the prairie provinces and the big cities of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver swinging left (the suburbs are the battleground)... but then you've got Quebec that's a completely separate game. They have their own political party that doesn't run candidates outside of Quebec.
When Canada was formed, there were four political parties - the English left/right and the French left/right.
A linguistic gap completely changes the political landscape, at a level that doesn't exist in purely-Anglophonic USA.
Meh, the writer's trying weakly to draw a meaningful comparison between Ukranian politics and American politics ... and as you note, it doesn't work all that well anyway.
My constructive critique: The analogy of red states and blue states to Ukrainian language and Russian language regions doesn't fit entirely.
A state is red or blue with 51% of the vote. these regions have a much larger gap between majority and minority opinion by region.