from Euromaidan:

During the first years of Soviet power, a Moscow newspaper published an article telling its readers how easy and potentially profitable it would be for them to form a national republic. According to the paper, they didn’t need a nation or anything like a set of institutions: they needed only paper on which to make a declaration.

The Russian government seems to have dusted off that old guidance and is now promoting the formation of republics not within the Russian Federation – there it is doing its best to destroy them – but rather inside a neighboring country – Ukraine – in the hopes that such republics will help Moscow destroy it.

(I need to research this.)