> You must also understand that in Russian culture it was common to mock Ukrainians as dumb farmer hicks, while thinking of themselves as highly technologically advanced.
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.
>Ukraine has existed as a country for a very long time. It has been fought over and divided by neighboring countries for most of its existence. I am saying that it's time for Ukrainians to find, define, and defend their identity.
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.
> Ukraine has a culture, a history, a language. That culture, history, and language is UKRAINIAN. Not Russian.
> 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>
>Lots of them were banished from the island by Russian Empire.
You either use this as a very politically loaded term for Stalinist Soviet Union (which is a problem with your post on its own right), or you are wrong.
>- But russians usually don't remember Dagestan(Russia) or the Chechen Republic(Russia) where the number of russians is less than 5%. Or Belgium with german speaking people .
Russia and Belgium, unlike Ukraine, aren't nation states. Russia is a multi-ethnic country, which is stated in its constitution.
> Ukrainian regions were a part of the Russian Empire for quite a long time. Why would they not join Russia?
Why should they?
>- Crimea is an autonomy, but even now russians stimulated by pro-Russia politicians say that they want Ukraine to be a federation. Do they know what is the difference between autonomy and federation?
So some Russians say one thing, other Russians say different things, so what? I tell you that there is a great deal of difference between unitary state with some autonomies and federation (which is obvious really, think Spain and USA).
>If you look at the Russian Imperial Census of 1897 you will see that people living in the eastern part of modern Ukraine were 80-90% ukrainian speaking. And now if you go to the country area of eastern regions you will see lots of ukrainian speaking people.
How is the census of 1897 related? You wouldn't say parts of Far East and Siberia, which were predominantly Ukrainian-speaking then should be parts of Ukraine now?
>There were 3 man-made famine in Ukrainian SSR conducted by Soviet regime and lots of repressions killed more ukrainians than ukrainians died during the 2 World War.
Oh, now 3 man-made famines specifically designed to destroy Ukrainian nation, great. What do you think of people of Lower Volga, North Caucasus and Siberia who perished of famine of 1932-1933? I guess you prefer not to notice their existence because they don't serve your political goals of the day.
>And now guess what Stalin does? He invites russians to the industrial western part of Ukraine. This region required a work force at that time.
Yeah, I guess it's also Stalin (a Georgian btw) who put all the iron ore and coal there, just to extinguish all the Ukrainians so when Ukraine becomes independent there are less Ukrainian-speaking people there? What a prophet, wasn't he? Or should he just ignore industrial potential of Eastern Ukraine whatsoever?
This is a really telling example of Russia-directed scare-mongering, I feel uneasy about it, as a Russian.
> Demographically, Russian speakers in this part were reliant on Ukraine for much of its access to natural resources and capital, there is a sense of being poor and looked down upon by the Ukranians in the West and its exactly this class divide that fuels ethno-nationalism.
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.
> Ukraine has far more in common with Russia culturally than with America.
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.
> Especially how the Ukrainian speaking part of Ukraine has treated the Russian speaking Ukrainians
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.
> Historically, there was not much holding back punches between Russia and Ukraine. You may start reading about Holodomor, which is still debated whether it counts as genocide or not.
This is such a demagogy and a narrow-sighted view of history. It is always brought up only for the purpose of pouring more oil on the flames and turning up nationalistic tensions.
Holodomor has nothing to do with Ukrainians or Russians. It had happened all over the Soviet Union.
Much more Kazakhs had died relatively to their total population, and almost the same amount of Russians in an absolute value.
Hungers of 1930s were a global event, not something conjured by one particularly nasty Georgian.
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.
> Ukraine is the only country to have fought off Russia, except Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Germany.
It (presuming it succeeds) will be the only country to have fought off the Russian Federation, or anything referred to (even if only somewhat loosely) as “Russia” in the third millenium.
Fought (and in some of the cases you cited got steamrolled by) the USSR in WWII is... not particularly relevant.
> Ukraine is already a buffer state by virtue of its geographical position
> Ukraine has existed as a country for a very long time.
Except it really hasn't. During the Kievan Rus era, there was no distinction between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine was the frontier region (hence the etymology of the word from old Slavic), and it's been contested by Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Austro-Hungary, Tatars, etc... After centuries changing hands, Ukraine was eventually held by the Russian empire (who had by then moved its capital from Kyiv to Moscow), and Ukraine only became a country briefly from 1917 to 1920. Then again in 1991.
To say its been a country 'for a very long time' is patently false, and revisionist history.
> USSR was Russia and Russia was USSR.
This is again false. When they murdered the royal family, suppressed the Church, and murdered millions of Russians, they ceased to represent the Russian people. They were a cabal of communists who oppressed Russians and many other peoples.
That's beside the point. Right now, there's a growing nationalist sentiment growing in Ukraine. If you go to Ukraine and shout this historical fact in the streets of, say, Kiyv, you might just encounter a group of people who violently disagree with the "underlying idea" (which you won't express, but they'll perceive) that Ukraine is Russia's bitch.
Imagine shouting about the Armenian genocide in Instanbul, or about the extermination and oppression of Native Americans in a major city in Texas.
Maybe not exactly, but you get the idea.
> My ancestors never immigrated from a country called Ukraine even though they were Ukrainian (or back then often called Ruthenian)
> unless the Ukrainians already have moveable tank capable bridges
I am pretty sure they've had them for a long time, not least because they did multiple river crossings, many successful. Their army is quite capable, and was already quite capable prior to the post-February wave of foreign support. For example in the air defense department, as far as Europe goes they were only second to Russia (though the missiles are starting to run out).
Ukraine was deeply integrated into the USSR and even Russian military industrial complex - shipbuilding (after Moskva sank the remaining best ships in the Black Sea Fleet are made in Ukraine, Mykolaiv I think), engines (both turbojet/turbofan and rocket), whole aircraft manufacturing (Antonov), assembly of armored vehicles ... The lead designer of R-7, the first serious space rocket and the reason why Russians think they won the space race, was a Ukrainian.
> which is also why Ukraine punched above its weight in the space sector
In 1991 it was expected that independent Ukraine, a 52 million strong country, will basically be the next Spain.
What did it punch in the space sector in the last 30 years? They did indeed inherit a huge chunk of USSR industry and science and nothing went out of it.
Who is they? Do you believe that Putin's regime is a democratic expression of the will of the Russian people?
> my people being exterminated
What the Ukrainian people are going through is absolutely horrible. But it is by no means an extermination.
> They have supported this regime for decades.
Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union for 7 decades. During this time, the Soviet Union invaded Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. I would still consider Ukrainians victims of the Soviet Union and not supporters.
> All the Russian speaking Ukrainians are pro Ukraine and want the Russians out.
I didn't say they wanted Russian occupation necessarily, just that they were separatist from Ukraine. They were all significantly in favor of Ukrainian independence from USSR of course.
> So how likely do you think it is that those regions are really separatist?
Are you in denial of the existence of Ukrainian separatist regions and the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic?
I think the Soviet Union physically based a good chunk of its military industry in Ukraine, which the country then inherited when it became independent. So when we talk about Ukraine in this context, we're talking about a former superpower.
>So what you're saying is that 30% of the people of Ukraine belong in Russia? Duly noted.
The ones who don't want to live in Ukraine, and who want to speak Russian and not Ukrainian, do.
Ukraine is better off without agitators such as yourself actively trying to dilute the culture and language; having lived in Catalonia for many years, I absolutely relate to this.
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.
reply