And what if Russia is right in this situation? I mean, whether occurred these events if Ukrainian Rada behaved a bit more friendly with foreign language minorities? If kept the law, which guaranteed free language using for all the minorities of Ukraine? Slovakian, Romanian, Hungarian, Russian and so on...
If you think the Russians are right? Then so was the invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1950's / 1960's as the reasons are largely the same? The people want independence from the bullying Russian bear!
The Ukrainian parliament have only repealed a hated law passed by Yanukovych making Russian and Ukrainian both official languages. To do so at this time was a mistake in my view. The Ukrainians who speak Russian will carry on doing so as the majority of them are actually Ukrainian, who speak Russian for historical reasons, where it was the official language of the Soviet Union. This applies across families in different parts of the Ukraine including my extended one. Most Ukrainians apart from those in the very east and Crimea speak both languages. Russian will stay as the second language of the Ukraine. The languages are very close, with Ukrainian classed as old Russian.
There were no minority-related acts by legislation so the situation is certainly not the same.
There is no persecution of the Russian minority which is about 30% of the population by Ukrainians. The law with the Russian language has now reverted back to how it was from 1991 to 2010 with Ukrainian the official language but Russian recognised as a second language. The main reason Yanukovych was keen on this law was because he speaks very little Ukrainian. My understanding is that the language and the orthodox religion all came from the Rus region around Kyiv and this is why Ukrainian is the old form of the language and Russian the modern version.
There have never been until the last few weeks any major tensions between the Russian and Ukrainian populations, with Russians identifying themselves as Ukrainians and this is all the population's country. The interim government want to unify the country as this is in their interests and also all of the populations. The industrial heartland is in the east and all Ukrainians recognise that they benefit from the production and exports from this. In the south and most western major cities (including Kyiv, Lyiv being an exception) Russian is spoken even though the majority of people in the west of the country are of Ukrainian origin.
The enemy of virtually all of the people is rampant corruption and crony capitalism, which means that there are the very rich few and the many poor. In the world corruption index Ukraine is at about 180 out of 200 odd countries. Under Yanukovych if you were outside of his political circle and already running a successful business or started one then there was a good chance that your profits would be subject to a 'tax investigation' and extra payments or you would be made an offer you couldn't refuse at the ruling classes prices with no redress to law and the courts as this was also controlled by them. This was the common enemy of all Ukrainians, hence the protests with many Russians-Ukrainians and Ukrainians protesting (and dying) side by side to remove this cancer which affects all of them from society. This also affected many workers in the east where strikes or any other expression of workers rights, would lead to dismissal, again with no redress through the courts. They looked upon the EU trade agreement and influence as a way of stamping out this cancer from society so it became an aspiration and hence they became the centre of the protests.
What virtually all Ukrainians see in Western Europe, are relatively uncorrupt rich countries with independent courts, respected property and human rights and they want the same. The old Soviet East European countries in the EU still have corruption problems, which I understand are gradually improving, but none of them have problems on Ukraine's scale.
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Topic: So how is the Ukraine going to pan out? (Read 3712 times)