Russia s Long Disdain for Ukrainian Nationhood – WSJ

Once the fierce Ukrainian resistance showed that hardly any Ukrainians greeted Russian soldiers as liberators, the tone shifted. Now Russian state media and official discourse argue that Ukraine and its culture must be simply wiped out an idea that explains the killing spree in towns like Bucha during the Russian occupation.

A commentary published by Russia s RIA state news agency on April 3 under the title What Russia Must Do to Ukraine argued that ordinary Ukrainians must be made to atone for the guilt of hostility to Moscow, the name Ukraine should be abolished once again and the country split into several pieces. Ukrainian elites should be physically liquidated and the remaining population re-educated and de-Ukrainized.

Russia s former president and current deputy national security chief, Dmitry Medvedev, outlined a similar vision for the future of Ukraine days later, writing that after the Russian victory, the Ukrainian state will disappear just like the Nazi Third Reich. As for the Ukrainians deep sense of their own separate nationhood, Mr. Medvedev explained, It s a great fake fed by anti-Russian venom and an all-encompassing lie about their own identity. It never existed in history and doesn t exist today.

via www.wsj.com

It’s as if we walked into a situation where an abused child was kept locked in the basement by her drunken step-father. We helped get her out before we quite realized the nature of the relationship. Now the step-father is really mad at us.