The unreal

This is an article in the Guardian about the assassination of a Ukranian nationalist in Lviv.

The person had formerly been a member of the Svoboda party.

This party has a track record of antisemitism. In the past it used to be described in the liberal press as ‘ultranationalisr’. It is by any normal European standards on the very far ‘right’. No mention of that here.

The article describes Iryna Farion as a ‘defender of the Ukrainian language’, but even from internal evidence of the article we learn that she campaigned against the Russian language.

This part is off the wall:

“Although Ukrainian is the sole state language of Ukraine, many of its people speak Russian as a first language, a legacy of Soviet rule, when Ukrainian was under official pressure”.

If this was presented by a student of history at school it would fail. In fact initially the Bolsheviks promoted Ukrainian culture though later this changed and there was repression. But, overall, this line can be exposed by pointing to the simple fact that Russian was very widely spoken in Ukraine long after the end of the USSR. For many Ukrainians Russian was, and is, their first language. If you watch clips from the frontline in Ukraine today you will often hear soldiers speaking Russian. (Anecdotally, the editor of thus site is currently working in a language summer camp in the UK. There are about 20 Ukrainian students here. They are speaking Russian to each other, not Ukrainian, though they can speak Ukrainian).

“Promoting the language has long been an important issue, with parliament passing legislation to entrench its use in public life and in the services industry.”

In reality the current government downgraded the status of Russian and forced, for example, shopkeepers to greet customers in Ukrainian. Not some innocent defending and ‘promoting’ Ukrainian.

Reuters is lying through their teeth. This is crude war propaganda.