Quote from: SneakyFrickinRussian on Yesterday at 12:05:07>Ukraine doesn't count the people there as ethnically Ukrainian or ethnically Russian, they count them as Ukrainian citizens. Only Russia makes a fuss about classifying ethnicity and they count anyone who speaks Russian as Russian ethnicity. And they use that as an excuse to go to war
No, it is not true. ukraine since 2014 was aggresively trying to re-born people as ukrainians - even my step-sister and her husband became self-identified ukrainians, despite having no ancestors of ukranian origin and having basically no working knowledge of ukrainian language. Second, ukraine never identified itself as multi-nation country. It could be easily proved by looking at language laws. For all time of ukraine independence Russian language was opressed as much as it could be for a language of everyday talk for about a half of ukraine population. The first law to cancel by ukrainian parliament after Yanukovich forced exit was law of Russian language status as regional (local) - this was so much important for Western-oriented leaders coming to power after Maidan coup. C'mon, you can distrust me, but Orban talks about the same - ukraine is opressing the right of using people's native language (he talks about Hungarian minority in West Karpathes). No other European country with multiple languages in use by population has so opressing language laws - Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Spain, UK. And yes, the story began before 2014, and yes, no war could excuse it.
Sigh, again, the only one who cares about the ethnicity nonsense is Russia. When your step sister says she self identifies as a ukranian she is making a statement that she doesn't want to be a citizen of Russia and is a citizen of Ukraine and doesn't want Russia to use her as an excuse for war
Russian language was not oppressed as much as it could be, that is nonsense. Russian has been long spoken through out Ukraine, even in kyiv. Of course come independence, Ukraine did encourage the take up of the Ukrainian language which was prior suppressed by the Russians. Russia even today suppresses the Ukranian language in the territories they take over from Ukraine
Come Yanukovich, they did remove the Russian language as the official language for legal documents. But your language not being official language is not oppression. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland all did the same thing
You seem to misunderstand why the countries you listed allow for multiple official languages. By EU law, any country that joins official language must become an official language of the EU. If Ukraine were to join with 2 official languages, that means the entire EU would have to add both languages to all legal. Reducing it to 1 makes sense, for both EU and Ukraine. Do understand just because it isn't an official language doesn't mean you can't get translated copies. It just dictates how official documents are communicated
Now was there some discrimination in general of the Russian language in Ukraine due to people being sore from Russia trying to control them? Yes, as the saying goes, bullying leads to more bullying. That said, as they join the EU, EU law forbids discriminating against languages, so these things would have been corected as they grew closer to compliance with the EU
Quote>That said, as far as the census went in 2001, 56.9% of people in Donetsk see themselves as Ukrainian, and 38.2% as Russian. Luhansk was 58% Ukranian, 39% Russian
I don't trust even Russian election results, and you are trying to convince me using ukrainian stats - sorry, no way. This question is too political for them to show real statistics. Probably, it is no better thinking, but between 20 to 30 relatives I had/have in Donbass no one was/is speaking ukrainian language - only Russian. The only case of me hearing ukrainian language talk (except from radio/TV) was when some alcoholic man approached me on street asking for money. We had a small talk, and he said he was not local. That's it.
Just because you identify yourself as Ukrainian doesn't mean you don't speak Russian. The language you speak of has nothing to do with how you identify yourself
The census is done by local regions, why would the Donetsk and Luhsnk regions pretend they have more % people identifying as Ukrainians?
Quote>What nonsense are you talking about?
I'm talking about simple fact - no separatist could win if population doesn't support him. This was main reason why Russia lost first Chechen war. I know for sure Donbass separatists were not angels coming from Heaven, pretty much of them were cruel and violent. But ukranian forces were no better, and Donbass local population rarely saw him as protecters. They were aliens for them. Furthermore, if you still have illusions on what Tornado, Azov, Aydar and other armed nationalistic ukrainian battalions did with local population - google it, you will find many unpleasant surprises. For example, Tornado was so awful that even ukrainian law enforcement couldn't resist to take actions towards them.
The separatists were pretty much lost, Ukraine could have long wiped them out, but Ukraine weakened their assault because they didn't want to p*** off Russia. Russia then used that opportunity to send Russians in pretending to be from Donbas which is when Ukraine ended up being pushed back
On top of that, the reason why the separatists in Donbas got initial support was they also did exactly what Hitler did by spreading misinformation and propaganda to make people panic. By the end, the Donbas people wanted things to end, but the Russians and the separatist didn't let them
As for militaristic nationalists like Azov, Ukraine didn't like them either and would have likely slowly got rid of them. If not for Russia sending their troops into Ukraine. At that point Ukraine has no choice as anyone willing to fight against Russia they had no choice but to accept
Quote>As far as Ukraine is really concerned, as long as Donbas doesn't want to join Ukraine, they would be fine with letting them go if they really wish
No, it is not true. ukraine couldn't afford Donbass to exit, because real rulers of ukraine didn't allow it to happen. If only it was true - we would be living in so much better world now.
I will remind you that prior, Russia sabotaged the joining of EU and tried to force Ukraine to lock with them, then took over Crimea. If Russia was not part of it and Donbas just independently wanted independence, that would be a different story. Because Ukraine's real fear isn't Donbas leaving, but it being used as a precedence for Russia to take Ukraine. Which is exactly what Russia has been doing.
Quote>1. Russia doesn't care about Donbas, they only want 2 places, Crimea and Kyiv
In fact, from 2014 to 2022 Putin was trying to return Donbass to ukraine, but under conditions he wanted. In fact, it was a betrayal of all Russian self-identified people of Donbass, but this betrayal is nobody's business except for Putin and Russians. Same time ukraine didn't want to have even more alienated and even more uncontrollable Donbass inside, so lazy war with ocassional artillery bombings and real deaths seemed to be endless.
Yes, he doesn't care about Donbass. But he does care about taking Ukraine, his so called terms werefor him to take Ukraine easier
Quote>2. It would make all agreements worthless between Russia as Budapest already exist under which Russia promised to not to invade Ukraine and guarantee their borders. So it would be like acknowledging any future agreement between Russia can be easily broken by Russia at their convenience
Gorbachev withdrawed Soviet army from East Germany under conditions of NATO not being extended. I know, NATO representatives are cynically trying to convince us that no such agreements and conditions could ever be approved by NATO in that time. But I highly doubt that Gorbachev was so stupid to withdraw without anything for exchange for him. I bet it was unspoken agreement, which Gorbachev sadly refused to write on paper (yeah, I and many other Russians don't count him smart, not only for this reason).
So, it is really ridiculous to hear of broken agreements from you, since almost a half of Europe became NATO members in less than 20 years. And yes, I even didn't start to talk about Serbia bombings in 1999. You have no right to ask Russians to obey agreements except for right of being stronger, but after some not so long time you will loose this right too.
An agreement is something that is made on paper, there is no such thing as an unspoken agreement because there is no way anyone can prove it existed. Even secret agreements are done on paper, they just aren't released publicly but you always want to have proof in the off chance the other side does not honor it
Trying to claim that an non-existent figment of imagination being broken is same thing as an actual signed agreements is nonsense
On top of that, the translator for Gorbachev confirmed that no such thing existed and that Gorbachev didn't think there was an agreement related to no expansion of NATO
It is just Russian propaganda to create that myth
The reality is that with the end of the cold war, NATO didn't really care as much about Russia. In fact, things were moving more towards Russia eventually joining NATO with multiple joint councils, partnerships and cooperation signed between the two in the years
The problem was that with Putin gaining power, he wanted to bring back the soviet union which would be difficult if they all joined NATO, he also needed a public enemy for the Russian people, the big bad wolf. Of course before he gained power, he was fine with joining NATO as there were accounts of him being open to it and NATO open to it as well. But as the saying, power corrupts. As he gained more and more power he became greedy
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