Yes there's a lot of ethnic tensions in Russia, and that's why the Russian government will avoid playing the 'ethnic hate' card - until it wants to have the cou

Yes there's a lot of ethnic tensions in Russia, and that's why the Russian government will avoid playing the 'ethnic hate' card - until it wants to have the country to rule that is mostly intact. Well, Russians got to be the big brother because they're rather... big. Not just in numbers - they also have the two beating hearts that are Moscow and St. Petersburg. Having said that, on the Ukrainian side there are a lot of historically important places such as Kiev the mother of all Russian cities. And Belarus really has the legacy of Lithuanian Commonwealth which can be viewed as an East Slavic state as a competitor to Russian states.