Heh, it's kinda stereotypical that a Russian citizen wouldn't notice the difference between themselves and Ukrainians.

From my perspective as a foreign observer, the average Russian tends to be much more badly behaved than a Ukrainian. When I hear someone speaking Russian being very loud and obnoxious, violent, lacking manners, showing little empathy and lots of entitlement, 9/10 (I'd say always but maybe I'm forgetting something) it's a Russian citizen, not a Ukrainian.

I'm speaking as a Russian ethnic who's not a Russian citizen.

I don't think that's for either of us to declare.

I'm at least quarter-Ukrainian from my father's side (I think my parental grandfather was Russian, but parental grandmother was certainly Ukrainian). You sound like you have much less than that in you. We're in no position to dictate who's one people and who aren't.

I do consider Ukrainians and Belarussians brotherly peoples, from my view as a Russian. I wish either of them no harm, and all the best, and hope that no major conflict arises between either of the three.

But they're going to be the ones to tell me what nation they are and what other traits they identify themselves with.

> and Slavic culture has always been defined by culture, not necessarily ethnicity.

I don't think Slavic culture – if there is, indeed, such a thing – defines itself with itself. It can't be its own description, see?

Aside from that... Don't you think there's this whole new massive issue of nationality that defines a people?

So do Serbia, Bulgaria and to a much lesser extent Poland, Latvia and a bunch of others. That does not mean that they are not sovereign countries though.

> My dad worked extensively in Ukraine doing public health development. He was remarking to me the other day how even though it and Russia purported to be part of Europe, they reminded him much more of the developing nations in Asia that he’s worked in than Western Europe.

They are culturally and ideologically closer than anything in Asia. Economically, maybe.

They really don't. Even ignoring the fact that it's idiotic to talk about a single Russian ethnicity given the Russian Federation is comprised of multiple distinct ethnic and cultural heritages, Ukraine has a distinct and independent ethnicity.

https://www.eurac.edu/en/blogs/mobile-people-and-diverse-soc...

Just because they look alike to you and you can't tell apart which language is which, that does not mean they are not separate and distinct ethnicities. Hell, don't take my word for it. Just listen to what Russia's regime has to say about Ukraine and what they perceive their untermensch role towards Russia should be to understand how silly it is to not talk about ethnic cleansing.

No, you are not. Nothing further to say about it.

> I ask, what is its identity? Because historically it has close ties to Russia and a shared history with all Slavic people...

This is exactly the patronizing point of view that the Russians take of the Ukrainian identity: that it does not exist or that Ukraine is simply a part of Russia. This is exactly what the protesters are fighting. The fact that there are protesters on the streets right now is proof enough.

Moreover, any cultural identity does not exist in a vacuum. By your logic we can argue that the US has no identity of its own and is still just a breakaway British colony that is due to join the UK any day now. Just because one country invades another and subjugates its people for a period of time, does not make the occupied country a part of the occupying country. By that logic Poland has nearly as much claim on Ukraine as Russia does. Or, and I really like this one, Russia is just a part of Ukraine, and should immediately surrender all of its territories to Kiev immediately. After all Kiev was where Russia came from when Moscow was an insignificant fortress in the north.

Thank you for that nuanced point of view.

The history of that region is indeed very long and very complex, and the black and white picture painted by both western and Russian media is downright frustrating.

To give examples, Crimea was historically neither Russian nor Ukrainian, it was Tatar, and Ukraine is itself a weird cultural patchwork of Poles, Lithuanians, Prussians, Russians and a long list of other minor ethnic groups.

I live in Poland. I was in Ukraine many times. I work with Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians. My cousin married an Ukrainian. There's millions of them here. Literally nobody except for Russian propagandists ever complained about abuse of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

Kyiv (the capital) was mostly Russian-speaking till very recently. Most of Ukrainian politicians up to this point were Russian speaking. 5 of 6 presidents of Ukraine so far come from eastern Ukraine and were speaking Russian as their first language - including all the western-leaning ones (Yushchenko, Poroshenko, Zelenski).

Eastern ("russian-speaking") Ukraine is much more wealthy, almost all big cities and universities are there - because it's where the natural resources are. Western Ukraine is mostly countryside. Most of the Ukrainian elites come from the east.

Most Ukrainians speak both languages and switch depending on the context.

Ukrainian got more popular not because of some imagined persecution, but because Ukrainians started to associate Russian language with invaders and genociders after Russians: - poisoned presidential candidate - falsified elections - invaded Crimea and Donbas - annexed Donbas - invaded the rest of Ukraine

This didn't started in 2014 - it started in 2004.

As for neo-nazis exerting control - neonazis tried to run for parliament after 2014. They got 0.7% of votes. That's lower than in most countries in the western Europe, including Germany (AfD has ~15% support) and my own country Poland.

Not to mention that Russia currently is a totalitarian dictatorship that actively promotes killing Ukrainians on the TV. There's more neonazis in one russian division than in the whole of Ukraine.

> After the fall of the USSR, Ukraine started clawing back its own heritage and of course, there is friction. You're witnessing that friction.

<irony>So Russians don't want Ukrainians to speak the Ukrainian language and to have their own culture, now? That's really evil. I didn't know that.</irony>

Hahaha are you fucking serious. It's written there. There's also Google.

> It is often said that Ukrainian and Russian are intelligible with each other or even that they are the same language. This view is false and especially the latter statement is a product of Russian nationalism. Ukrainians can understand Russian better than the other way around, but this is complicated by very heavy bilingual learning on the part of Ukrainians. Ukrainian intelligibility of Russian is hard to measure, as Russian is widely spoken as a second language in Ukraine, and even if they don't speak it, Ukrainians have massive exposure to the language. The situation of Russian in Ukraine is similar to the role of Czech in Slovakia. Most Ukrainian speakers who do not speak Russian are in Canada. These speakers say they do not understand Russian at all. Therefore, inherent Ukrainian-Russian intelligibility may be much lower than as generally thought, and the higher numbers from Ukrainians in Ukraine must be due to bilingual learning and heavy exposure to Russian. The best place to study the inherent MI of these languages is among Ukrainian speakers in Canada, and the figures from there suggest that Ukrainian inherent intelligibility of Russian is close to zero.

Anyhow there's a significant amount of Ukrainian speakers in Canada who immigrated from before WWI through WW2. The study cites them since there's the only large Ukrainian-speaking group that isn't exposed to the Russian language.

Anyhow you're obviously just a Russian troll with too much time. Your sources don't show what you think they show and all you can do it repeat insults.

Also maybe read the section on the Russian language - lots of Turkic, French and German loan words. Only 10% of the same vocabulary as Ukrainian...

Half of Ukraine speaks Russian, including most of Kyiv. It wasn't looked down until Russia started the aggression. If anything western Ukraine (being less wealthy) was stereotypized as less developed and Ukrainian language was associated with that.

It became fashionable for Russian speaking Ukrainians to switch to speak Ukrainian after 2014 which is understandable.

In short you're wrong about almost everything.

> Ukraine was never part of the West and it can never be if you understand the military strategic value of its flatlands.

Ukraine was part of the west for over 300 years and why should it matter anyway? Ukrainians have the right to decide what they want to do.

Where did you get this info from? My experience growing up in USSR (in areas that are now Russia and Ukraine) was totally different. Ukraine had a reputation (well deserved) as a major tech hub. Most of Soviet space industry (military for one) was there -- rockets, missiles, rocket engines, electronics. Kyiv University was one of the major places of learning rivaling MGU (Moscow State University). People from all over the Soviet Union were fighting nail and tooth to be allowed to move and live in Kyiv. Yes, there were folk-jokes (anekdoty) about Ukrainians like about anybody else. This does not reflect in any form upon the fact that Ukraine was very highly developed republic within USSR. 3 out of 7 leader of USSR were Ukrainians (Khrushchev - 8 years, Brezhnev - 18 years in power, Chernenko - 2 years). Ukraine has always been a force to recon with.

EDIT: typos.

And which state was that? The Cossack Hetmanate? Which rebelled against the western occupiers and eventually joined the modern Russian Empire?

> However, it would be incorrect to refer to that language as "Russian". It was an ancestor language common to modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. Historically, wherever that language was spoken, its speakers generally referred to it as "Rusian" (as in "language of Rus"). In Western sources, it is usually referred to as Ruthenian. Conflating it with Russian is one of the tricks played in this kind of propaganda.

So Russian is one of the modern versions of the older Rus language, but isn't? Not sure I follow your logic here, you're pretty much agreeing with me then claiming for some reason Russian doesn't count as being descendant from the older Rusian language.

> Russia claims to be the sole legitimate successor to Kievan Rus, and all other successor states to be "breakaway parts" (ironic, given where Kiev is located).

You're missing a key part of history here: Muscovy, the Cossacks and others all rebelled against various invaders, and formed a common state: the Russian Empire. Which included both Moscow and Kiev for centuries.

> A rough analogy would be if Italy said that it's the Roman Empire

Do you not remember the part where there were a bunch of Italian city states that did eventually rejoin to form the Italian state? Italy wasn't Italy until quite recently. Also, France and Spain were Gaul and Iberia, inhabited by Celtic groups that were invaded by Rome.

This isn't analogous to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, whose people all came from the same original group.

> This is the point at which then-unified (mostly) East Slavic culture and language breaks apart. Western parts get more exposure to European culture, initially via Lithuania, and later also via Poland when the two form a commonwealth; Catholicism partially (but not wholly) replaces Eastern Orthodoxy, and language gets borrowings from Polish and Latin. Eastern parts get more exposure to the (then mostly Turkic) Mongol culture, with Eastern Orthodoxy becoming even more entrenched per Mongols' usual policy of supporting local religions and using them to control the rulers, and the language gets many Turkic borrowings.

Gotcha, so this is basically the modern revisionist, racist Ukrainian propaganda that Russians = Mongols, and Ukrainians are pure white Europeans, right? Never mind that fact that much of Ukraine (all of Crimea for example, and the south of Ukraine) was ruled by Tatars (one of the offshoots of the Mongol horde) for a decent amount of time. And there was absolutely no intermingling there right? Ukrainians didn't succumb to any Tatar influence or genetics, right?

Edit - also, I'm aware of the entire history of the Rus empire from when the Varangians (Vikings) settled in Novgorod, to when Prince Oleg went from Novgorod to Kiev, to Vladimir the Great, etc... Maybe because my family came during a time long before Ukrainians and Russians were feuding, but even though we've maintained fairly strong Ukrainian identity the modern anti-Russian propaganda is never anything I learned growing up. Just something we see in the media now.

I ask, what is its identity? Because historically it has close ties to Russia and a shared history with all Slavic people. In fact, how do we define what Ukraine was over history, since if that image I posted is correct most of it's territory was given by the Russian empire or Soviet leaders. Furthermore, Kiev was just as much the birthplace of Russia as Ukraine- current Russia and Ukraine were once indistinguishable as the principality of Kiev: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rus_de_Kiev_en_1237.png

>Stalin wanted to assimilate the rest of the soviet republics into one homogenized Russian-based people. Holodomor was a part of it. Re-read the Wikipedia article and the primary sources. Re. Stalin: Let's not re-write history. USSR was Russia and Russia was USSR. No other country really mattered under Stalin and it was the Russian way or the highway.

Perhaps I am not familiar enough with it. Nonetheless, interesting how the hundreds of years of years of shared history should be disregarded because of the actions of one man who was ethnically neither Ukrainian nor Russian, and yet, according to you, killed Ukrainians in the name of Russians.

Personally I believe Ukraine and Russia should be equals in whatever future association they make. I see nothing wrong with saying Russia should equally be a part of Ukraine. It is just easier to imagine the opposite because Russia is bigger.

>This is exactly what the protesters are fighting. The fact that there are protesters on the streets right now is proof enough.

There are all sorts of protesters out there, and I have read that most of them are protesting corruption, not the trade agreement or East vs West. Anyway, let the elections decide.

>Just because one country invades another and subjugates its people for a period of time, does not make the occupied country a part of the occupying country.

Except Ukraine willingly joined the Russian empire in 1654. And again, many Ukrainians would like closer ties to Russia.

>Moreover, any cultural identity does not exist in a vacuum. By your logic we can argue that the US has no identity of its own and is still just a breakaway British colony that is due to join the UK any day now.

The similarity is that the US and the UK have very strong relations, and a difference is that many hundreds of years have elapsed since the American revolution. But, similarly, during the American revolution, there were royalists, and a foreign power (the French) did intervene to defeat the British. The point is that many Ukrainians would like closer ties to Russia, particularly those in the East.

Also, why pick the US when you can pick Canada- the Queen still comes by to visit, we have a governor-general, we are part of the commonwealth, and so on. A lot of people here feel close ties to the UK because of their British heritage.

You mean: like Latvia. Where it works just fine.

> To simply whip out a PDF and scream disinformation seem awfully short sighted way to influence people's opinions especially because it is condescending to the average HN user who has access to a plethora of fact finding search engines and social media to judge what the truth is.

Yes, the truth is: the Eastern part of Ukraine was the poorest, mostly because of the flow of capital going West-to-East, like in most countries that border even poorer countries to their East and richer countries to their West.

> It's up to the readers to gather information themselves and find the truths, not have it shoved down their throat in some emotional mania state of us vs them primal instincts.

Ah, the 'do your own research' bit. Yes, I remember that from some other context.

> Ukraine was never part of the West and it can never be if you understand the military strategic value of its flatlands.

The same was said of Poland and of the Baltics.

But it's clear what your angle is.

Except they really are all different situations. Turks and Kurds are completely different ethnic groups with different languages, origins and history. Kurds are closely related to Iranians, not Turks.

> Why would they have to? They gained independence 1991. That's the most significant bit, no?

Because there's revisionist history which states Ukrainians and Russians are different ethnic groups. They're not. They've shared the same history and culture for over a thousand years, they're the same ethnic group. Yes they're different nations now, but they're not different peoples.

You seem to think that because Ukrainians and Russians have some shared heritage (cultural, linguistic and biological), they cannot be separate nations. But many other pairs of nations also share a significant degree of these things – Germany and Austria (and German-speaking Switzerland too), France and Belgium (Wallonia), Belgium and the Netherlands (Flanders), the US and Canada, the UK and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Do you apply the same standards to any of them?

> Republic of Ukraine was created by Lenin and later was supported by Stalin who promoted "ukrainization" of eastern regions of Russia.

Neither Lenin nor Stalin invented the Ukrainian nationalist movement. There were already people within Ukraine who viewed themselves as belonging to a distinct nation from Russia; Lenin and Stalin just decided to ally themselves with some of these people and grant them some of their policy wishes.

> We do not yet fully understand why they did it

Marxism was originally an anti-nationalist movement–hence, it was very natural for the Bolsheviks to oppose Russian nationalism and support the demands of ethnic minorities for autonomy. Then, in the 1930s, Stalin gradually changed his mind about the topic – he began to see ethnic autonomy movements as a potential threat to his rule, and started promoting Russian nationalism and Russification in response.

Duly noted. Ignorance, the lack of historical as well as linguistic knowledge, and the lack of reputable and verifiable counterpoints on your behalf is now officialy Russian propaganda.

> The Ukrainian language is the Ukrainian language, what's spoken in the east is considered a Creole that's a combination of Russian and Ukrainian due to, well, centuries of Russification.

Please cease and desist. The prior statement had specifically called out the fact that Ukrainian has most likely descended – and please do yourself a favour to read it thrice – from the Ruthenian language which was an independent and a separate lingustic development and a separate language from the not yet existing Russian language, however with influences from Polish in what we now know as Western Ukraine. Ukranian being an insignificant dialect of Russian is the Russian Empire time propaganda. I fail to comprehend why you have chosen to contort previously stated facts so blatantly and obviously.

> Obviously. Every second place here is called "X Kraj". Literally the word used for region still.

> Okraj literally means border but it doesn't really matter, edge and border are literally the same thing in English. Dunno why you are insinuating it's different.

I beseech you to allow me to graciously lift the veil of your linguistic confusion. Consider the following examples (languages are listed out strictly in the alphabetical order):

Example 1:

English: the city fringe

Czech: okraj mesta

Polish: obrzeza miasta

Russian: ??????? ?????? (okraina goroda)

Slovak: okraj mesta

Ukrainian: ??????? ????? (okolycja mista)

Example 2:

English: at the city fringe / at the outskirts of the city

Czech: na okraji mesta

Polish: na obrzezach miasta

Russian: ?? ???? ?????? (na kraju goroda)

Slovak: na okraji mesta

Ukrainian: ?? ??????? ????? (na okolyci mista)

Example 3:

English: the edge of the world

Czech: okraj sveta

Polish: kraniec swiata

Russian: ???? ????? (metaphorical or archaic) / ???? ????? (kraj sveta / kraj zemli)

Slovak: okraj sveta

Ukrainian: ???? ????? (kraju svitu)

Example 4:

English: at the edge of the bed

Czech: na okraji postele

Polish: na skraju lózka

Russian: ?? ???? ??????? / ?? ???? ??????? (na kraju krovati / na kraju posteli)

Slovak: na okraji postele

Ukrainian: ?? ???? ????? (na kraju ližka)

What is obvious is that in some «kraj» related examples Russian is closer to Czech and Slovak with Ukrainian and Polish being closer to each other rather than Ukrainian being closer to Czech or Slovak (which is utter nonsense from both, historical and linguistic, points of view. But it won't convince you since Czech, Polish, Slovak and Ukranian are all Russian propaganda and are all admittedly Creole languages).

Should you have reputable lingustic counterpoints that can be cross-referenced, please provide them.

> So I got one date wrong […]

You have got too many things wrong, and you have to own up to it, stop spouting nonsense and admit to misrepresenting facts either out of sheer ignorance, or pushing your own personal agenda, or expressing a unsubstantiated strong opinion, or merely possessing a complete lack of knowledge on the subject. Most likely a combination thereof.

Strawmanning again. That same census shows 17.3% of Ukraine identifies ethnically (or culturally) as Russian. But instead you want to split hairs.

> 58% in Crimea

Crimea is Russian in the pre-war border, and is irrelevant to this thread.

> whereas only 41% of those who identified as Ukrainian could actually speak Ukrainian

Kind of telling that non-Ukrainian speaking people are identifying as culturally as Ukrainian. It puts further doubt as to how much people inside the pre-war borders wanted to be 'liberated' by being usurped by Russia. Language != culture != nationality != support for annexation

All the same Sevastopol, which is the only majority Russian population in pre-war Ukraine that you mentioned, is not all of Ukraine. Very clearly Russia's play was for the whole country. The kind and noble angle you're presenting of Russia as liberator is either disingenuous, if you're trolling, or delusional, if you're being earnest.

> and make up the majority of the fighting force currently advancing on West Ukraine

Even if that's verifiable, there's no way of knowing how many are fighting by choice. Wouldn't be the first time Russians/USSR sent people to fight 'under pain of death'. And of course they aren't alone in this sort of conduct in war time.

> is dropping bombs on these people?

Both sides. Because of a war—I repeat once again—instigated by Russia. These populations wouldn't be caught in the crossfire of shifting battle fronts, if there was no... err.. battle.

So I'm done here. You aren't arguing in good faith, nor seem to yield to reason. Feel free to have the last reply.