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Abstract: Ukraine is usually portrayed as a cleft country with a determining internal East–West divide. However, critical researchers in Ukrainian scholarship emphasize that the East–West paradigm fails to adequately reflect the complex reality of the Ukrainian society and its historical, linguistic, economic, and political mixture. This article deconstructs the origins and evolution of the eastern and western Ukrainian identities and argues that the current clash between the two regions should not be explained by linguistic and ethnic differences, geopolitical strategies, economic interests, or political gains but rather by symbolic geographies, historical myths, and political imaginations. As a consequence, Ukraine is unable to make clear choices about its geopolitical future and remains a liminal space of east and west, where the broader EU-centered and Russia-centered regions overlap. Resumen: Ucrania suele ser retratada como un país caracterizado por una división interna determinante entre el este y el oeste. Sin embargo, algunos investigadores critican este paradigma Este-Oeste, que no refleja la compleja realidad de la sociedad ucraniana y su mezcla histórica, lingüística, económica y política. En este artículo se deconstruyen los orígenes y la evolución de las identidades ucranianas orientales y occidentales y se argumenta que el actual choque entre las dos regiones debería explicarse por el nuevo enfoque de geografías simbólicas, mitos históricos e imaginaciones políticas. En caso contrario, Ucrania no puede tomar decisiones claras sobre su futuro geopolítico y sigue siendo un espacio liminal de este y oeste, donde se superponen las regiones más amplias centradas en la UE y en Rusia, respectivamente. Résumé: L'Ukraine est généralement présentée comme un pays avec une division interne Est-Ouest déterminante. Cependant, des chercheurs ukrainiens critiquent ce paradigme Est-Ouest, qui ne reflèterait pas la réalité complexe de la société ukrainienne ni son mélange historique, linguistique, économique et politique. Cet article déconstruit les origines et l'évolution des identités ukrainiennes orientales et occidentales et soutient que le conflit qui les oppose actuellement devrait être expliqué par la nouvelle approche des géographies symboliques, des mythes historiques et des imaginations politiques. A défaut, l'Ukraine est incapable de faire des choix clairs quant à son avenir géopolitique et reste un espace liminaire entre l'Est et l'Ouest, où les régions plus larges centrées sur l'UE et la Russie se chevauchent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current state of research on Lower Palaeolithic sites in Ukraine within its 1991 borders is the focus of this paper. Over the last 10–15 years, many new sites have been discovered in different parts of the eastern European area of the country, reassessed some old materials. In the central European region of the country, in the Ukrainian Transcarpathia, important new stratified Lower Palaeolithic sites have also been found. The current Ukrainian Lower Palaeolithic records demonstrate hominin presence in mountainous areas (Carpathians, Crimea) and the valleys of all major rivers, namely the Dniester, Southern Buh, Dnieper and Severskiy Donets. The article presents a brief review of the main currently known Lower Palaeolithic assemblages. Available geological, geomorphological, biostratigraphical data and ESR dates allow defining their age between 1.2 and 0.4 Myг; sites correlate with few warm phases between MIS 35 and MIS 11. Earlier sites, very tentatively dated at around 2 Myг, gravitate towards the seashore and mountainous areas. Later sites witness steady, though not continuous, colonisation of East European plain fringe areas. The main regularities of geographical setting, chronology, morphological and technological characteristics of assemblages of the Lower Palaeolithic sites of the Western segment of the East European plain are characterised. Typologically, industries are mainly characterised as belonging to Mode I. Core-and-flake industries survives to the Holsteinian. Essential difficulties in lithic raw materials supply could probably be a reason for the rise of a peculiar pattern of technological behaviour that involved mainly bipolar knapping and widely applied trimming technique of shaping the working edges of tools. Some signals of probable population movements penetrated the territory of Ukraine by the Asia Minor "western" trajectory and by Caucasian "eastern" way are revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]