This is badly written piece about Ukrainian nationalism in the Guardian. It cynically peddles the core myth of these people; that poor Ukraine is being attacked by Russia for being Ukrainian, for wanting to be “independent” – and to speak Ukrainian. The West, equally cynically, backs and reproduces this myth – because aligning ourselves with these nutters seems to offer some transient political advantage. My view is that our actual advantage would be the exact opposite; our advantage would be to ally with Russia. Russia is/was zero threat to the West before all this started, and offered substantial economic opportunities.
Russia is attacking Ukraine because Ukraine in NATO presents a security threat to Russia. Secondly, (a long way down I think), there was some sympathy for the “pro-Russian” population in the East of Ukraine who were being badly treated by the Maidan putschists, (a piece of the story absent from the standard Ukrainian nationalist narrative reproduced in the above article).
Yanukovych was not “pro-Russian”. He was just not an out and out Ukrainian nationalist. One of the ironies of this whole situation is that Europe is tying its fate to a small group of extreme right-wing nationalists who despise, and their actions prove this, the kind of pluralist, open, tolerant, supportive of minority rights, politics which the EU, technically, still stands for.
Anyway; this is what the Guardian won’t publish. (They also silently delete any comments I make on their commenting forums which are too close to the bone about the propaganda they produce).
I read the article about the Ukrainian language in the Guardian of 24th August with dismay. I really hope your readers understand what they are reading; a very one-sided presentation of Ukrainian “identity”. The most striking point is how the viewpoint of the people in Ukraine who have a pluralist conception of what modern Ukraine could be is eclipsed / cultured out. There are millions of people in Ukraine, (predominantly in the East), who like having an identity which bridges Russian culture and Ukrainian. The Maidan may have started as a “popular uprising” but if so it was hijacked by Ukrainian nationalists who could not bring themselves to accept a pluralistic society. (I am leaving aside the ease with which we seem ready to accept that the way to deal with a “corrupt” “pro-Russian” President is a violent putsch, rather than use the ballot box). It is a huge irony that a condition of EU membership is that Kiev must support minority rights in Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine would almost certainly have to reverse some of its anti minority language legislation in order to become a member of the EU. Freedom in liberal democracies is other than the author envisages.
A final, anecdotal, point. I have spent the summer teaching in a Summer Camp, (in the UK). We had a batch of Ukrainian teenagers, living in the UK as refugees. On day 1 they all spoke to each other in Ukrainian. On day 2, once they’d got to know each other, they switched to Russian. They obviously felt more comfortable speaking Russian. These young people expressed their freedom by speaking the dreaded Russian.