Russia's imperialistic ambitions rest largely on one important assertion widely accepted by the Moscow vites. It proposes that Russians and Ukrainians are one people destined to live in one country with its capital naturally in Moscow. Therefore, nothing irritates the Russians more than the glaring differences between the two nations and language, culture, historical experiences and mentality. If the Russians do recognize some differences, they will claim these are no greater than the inconspicuous variances between any two given regions of Russia. Most Russians perceive Ukrainian language and Ukraine itself as an unfortunate historic misunderstanding that arose from the harmful influence of Lithuania and Poland. Interestingly, it never occurred to the Russians that they themselves may be such a misunderstanding. So let's explore. In fact, the differences between the two nations go deep into the fundamentals of human psyche and they have been primarily shaped by starkly contrasting living conditions that have formed two completely opposing mentalities, the Ukrainian mentality and the mentality of the Russian world. So what is the national mentality of Ukrainians? The ancestors of modern Ukrainians were fortunate to find themselves occupying fertile black soils with a temperate continental climate. This contributed to the fact that one of the first agricultural civilizations in the world, the Tribile Culture, arose on the lands of modern Ukraine. With the development of arable farming land conservation techniques, fertile black soils made it possible to obtain high yielding crops from land cultivated by a relatively small group of people. The high productivity of agriculture allowed almost every peasant family with the adequate land to be self-sufficient. Over time, this led to an increased importance of individual farming operations. The owner of a farm relied mainly on the working capacity of his own family to produce the crops. The psychological consequence of this system was a sense of responsibility for one's actions and decisions which led to the development of awareness and individualism. In the western part of Ukraine, the Carpathian Mountains, natural conditions favored the development of another type of farming, cattle breeding. The Carpathian farmers also tended to rely on their own abilities which encouraged responsibility, psychological maturity and self-awareness. The Carpathian Mountains, which is the most important part of the world, is the presence of personal values and interests over collective ones. Such a world view, depending on a given situation, can either play a positive or negative role for the individual and society overall. The Ukrainian proverb among two Ukrainians are three commanders, describes the societal construct quite well, referring to individuals who tend to lead more than follow. Unfortunately, the many varying world views among the self-reliant Ukrainians have historically hindered consolidation of efforts and aggravated contradictions. It is because of such disagreements that the Ukrainian liberation movements of different historical timelines often ended in defeat. However, the advanced social consciousness led not only to confrontation, but also to unification at a level beyond the normal authoritative power structure. The association of free independent people took place on the principles of subordinates, the unity of personal goals, with common ones for the benefit of mutual development and spiritual enrichment. In history, such associations of Ukrainians were known as Brotherhoods and could be formed either based on belonging to Kozak communities or on religious grounds. Subordinates requires a high level of social consciousness, therefore is not a common mass phenomenon. It is due to this unity that the Ukrainians created a phenomenon hard to find in the military history of other countries. In the absence of their own state and surrounded by powerful enemies, Russia in the North and East and Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth in the West, the Ukrainians created armies that operated for centuries without any state support. These were the legendary Aprishki, the Carpathian mountain insurgents, who waged an armed struggle for over 400 years. The Kozaks, whose heroic military history spends two centuries. The Haidamake paramilitary units composed of commoners, who actively fought against the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth for 50 years. There were the heroic rebels of the Ukrainian national republic and the warriors of the Ukrainian and search and army. And more recently, the volunteer battalions fighting against the Russian invasion in Eastern Ukraine from 2014 on. All organized Ukrainians have always staged considerable resistance to the occupiers and its slavers. On the other hand, what were the forming factors of what Russians like to refer to as the spirituality of the Russian world? The formation of Moskavites took place under circumstances very different from those of Ukrainians. The soils of the Tsar-Demunov-Maskov-Ve were relatively inferior and yielded poor crops. The Sleshenberg agriculture technique often used, which involved burning forests to clear areas for edible plant cultivation, required significant collective effort and was not highly productive. This type of farming forced the peasants to live in large patriarchal families ruled by the Bolshak, the family patriarch and head of the household. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the power of the Bolshaks gave rise to a purely Russian phenomenon, snahachistva, or simply put, sexual relations between the Bolshak and his daughter and law. It is a touchy subject of Russian history and, examined from the psychological point of view, the tradition mirrors Zygman Freud's primal-horde theory. The conditions of agricultural labor required significant coordination of effort and, therefore, further merging of patriarchal families into even larger groups. This gave rise to the Minorial System, where the Pameshik, the feudal owner of land, unconditionally reigned over the peasant families, essentially replicating on a larger scale the structure of a Moskovite family. Served them appeared to be such an organic fit for the mysterious Russian soul that the Russian Empire was lasting the world to abolish it. The same social construct scaled up to encompass the entire Empire with the Tsar as the absolute ruler. The fact that the ruler was routinely referred to as Tsar-father, testifies to the transfer of the patriarchal family model and structure of authority to the entire society. With the overthrow of Tsarism and arrival of the Bolsheviks in 1917, the Tsar-father was simply replaced with the identical cult of the father of the people and great leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin, cementing the same vertical power structure. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, Gustav LeBong and Zigmund Freud explored the principles of psychology of large human groups. According to these studies, the mass collective consciousness is defined by low intellect and weak motivation. In large groups of humans, subconscious instincts tend to prevail. There is a notable drop in levels of consciousness, intelligence, personal responsibility, independence, and critical thinking. These conditions promote an infantile psyche and paternalistic trends in society, forming in the populace an unwavering belief that only the male authority figure, such as father's Tsar or father of the people, can make good decisions for society as a whole. To summarize, the low agricultural productivity of Muscovy and frequent crop failures due to climatic conditions, historically forced the Muscovites to look for alternative survival techniques, creating a strong power vertical. In turn, this authoritarian structure among people with a dominant collective consciousness created good conditions for aggression, attacks on neighbors and general transfer external expansion. Still in the neighbor's crops, or attacking smaller nations and forcing them to pay tribute was a better alternative to hard labor on bare and lands. A good example of groups of infantile persons led by an authoritative leader is teenage gangs. They feel confident and invincible as part of a pack and often act recklessly. Russian aggression against Ukraine at time does resemble unprovoked teenage mob violence against an unsuspecting adult. The victim is not always able to fight back, it is difficult for one to defeat the group. Additionally, they innate individualism over Ukrainians and resulting lack of a strong authority structure weakens the country's capacity to resist external aggression. Historically, various leaders in Ukraine consistently fail to find common ground on the method of resistance, and the strength continues today. The totalitarian societies are governed by an authoritative leader at the top of a clearly defined and vertically aligned power structure. Conversely, democratic societies that value personal freedoms generally elect relatively liberal politicians. No system however is perfect. A dictator inevitably leads his country to collapse, while democracies have been known to elect politicians with low moral and intellectual qualities. Despite the fact that this democratic side effect has certainly been fallen Ukraine over its 31 years of independence, we have every chance to come out victorious over the Russian aggressor. Because unity among highly conscientious individuals in all respects surpasses a crowd driven by primitive impulses.