Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

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"Yes/No" support is a bit of an over-simplifaction of the situation.

There's two major axes, here.

The government is pushing the 'Ukranian neo-nazis' propaganda, because it's a convenient bullshit excuse (as is all the spilled ink in Putin's essay about long-dead history). Some soft-headed people obviously believe that wholesale. What isn't an excuse, though, is that Ukraine did take steps to restrict its Russian minority. Many Russians who don't swallow the neo-nazi nonsense are sympathetic to that view on the situation (for, uh, obvious nationalistic reasons).

Now, whether or not sympathy for that is sufficient grounds to do nothing and respect Ukrainian sovereignty, to prosecute a proxy war, a limited war, or a full war all depends on how much of a warhawk you personally are.

My highly unscientific feeling is that public support rests somewhere north of 'most Russians believe that Ukraine has been repressing Russians, and would support a proxy war', and somewhere short of 'drive the fascist swine out - prosecute a full war and occupation of Kiev'.

Take steps like completely restricting Russian language in schools, public spaces, TV, etc? Considering that 100 years ago Ukrainian language was a dialect for peasants, that’s quite a leap. Communists started “rooting” - korenization - program in 1920s when Russians were wholesale written as Ukrainians in their ID papers, another 20 years of these steps and there will be no Russians left in Ukraine, same thing happened to Turks in Bulgaria. People remember and the current regime in Kiew is controlled by ultra-nationalists from Volyn and Galicia, with their worship of Bandera, OUN/UPA and the rest of the scum. When they came to power during Maidan, people hear the chant all the time - “Moskalyaku na gilyaku”. Do you know what it means?

Current regime — is a Russian speaking comedian Vova Zelenskiy (who is a Jew) and his party, which won elections. There is no nationalist party in Ukrainian parliament. There is Russian language in public spaces and TV. There are more then 600 schools with Russian language of instruction.

"Dialect for peasants" has its roots in Ruthenian language, that was a main language in Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

And no, Russians were not written wholesale as Ukrainians, anyone who can check Soviet records can attest that.

>> people hear the chant all the time - “Moskalyaku na gilyaku Well, if they would listen to Russian TV, they would hear that.

Yes, thank you for making the point about how Russians may be sympathetic to that direction.

But exactly how many people are you ready to kill over your sympathies? Could you give a ballpark order of magnitude estimate? 10? 100? 10,000? [1] 100,000?

On a scale of cultural repression, I can't say that this situation elicits even a small fraction of sympathy from me as what's going on with say, the Uyghurs in China.

[1] We're past that mark already.

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