Catching up with 'Europe'? Constitutional debates on the territorial-administrative model in independent Ukraine

Ukraine is a country with pronounced regional differences and a longstanding indigenous tradition of thinking on decentralization and federalism. Yet upon emerging as an independent polity, Ukraine failed to reform the territorial division inherited from the Soviet Union and opted for a centralized territorial-administrative system and territorial autonomy for the Crimean peninsula. The path of post-Soviet reforms can largely be attributed to a profound disagreement on what constituted the indigenous tradition and fear of centrifugal tendencies, which manifested themselves after independence. In the context of historical legacies of statelessness, the preservation of national unity and territorial cohesion was deemed of paramount importance. This would consolidate Ukraine's transformation into a truly European nation-state.