© RT
At the end of January, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree on "Russian Territories Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians," which includes measures aimed at "preserving the national identity of Ukrainians" in Russia.
"This is the restoration of the truth about the historical past for the sake of Ukraine's future," Zelensky
said in a video address on his country's annual Day of Unity.
The published decree states that the Kiev government has been instructed to develop and submit an action plan to the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine concerning a number of historical Russian borderlands - namely, Kuban Region and Starodubshchyna, as well as northern and eastern Slobozhanshchyna, which correspond to Russia's present-day Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, and Rostov regions.
The government will also have to "debunk Russian myths about Ukraine" and "develop interaction between Ukrainians and the peoples enslaved by Russia."
"For centuries, Russia has systematically committed and continues to commit acts aimed at destroying [Ukrainian] national identity, oppressing Ukrainians, violating their rights and freedoms, including on lands which they had historically inhabited," Zelensky
said.Despite its declarative tone, the decree caused fierce controversy in both Ukrainian and Russian media. Although the document is mainly informational (especially given the failure of last year's counteroffensive and the difficult situation at the front), it demonstrates that, for Ukraine's political elite,
the military conflict isn't the only problem; there is also the issue of the two conflicting "visions" of the post-Soviet space and its political, cultural, and economic transformation. Russia's vision is multinational, conservative, and focused on sovereignty, while Ukraine's is mono-ethnic, Westernized, and focused on globalization.
Below,
RT explores why Vladimir Zelensky started a territorial dispute with Russia two years into the military conflict, explains who had historically inhabited the border regions and who resides there today, and comments on what makes Ukraine's "imperial" project vulnerable.
Comment:
1) The author wrote: "the concept of identity is perhaps the main issue in the current conflict." Other points could have been included. Below are some themes and topics as found in older SOTT articles:
About the intention of the West to break up and control Russia:
Related to the history of the conflict in Ukraine:
2) From the same source, there was two weeks before the article by Petr Lavrenin:
22 Jan, 2024 18:07
Zelensky brands parts of Russia 'historically' Ukrainian
The president has listed six regions in a decree demanding that Ukrainian "national identity" be preserved inside the neighboring country
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky declared six Russian regions to be "historically inhabited by Ukrainians" in a decree published on Monday. The list does not include any of the territory that Kiev claims sovereignty over in the ongoing conflict with Moscow, and focuses on globally recognized parts of Russia.
The document includes Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions, all of which border Ukraine. It also lists Voronezh, Rostov, and Krasnodar regions, all of which bordered Ukraine before 2014, when Crimea decided to join Russia in a referendum and the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics declared independence from Kiev.
Zelensky claimed the population of these territories had been subjected to "the policy of forced Russification," and ordered the government in Kiev to develop "an action plan" to "preserve" Ukrainian "national identity" in Russia.
The decree calls on Russia to "provide Ukrainians living in its territories" with access to education in the Ukrainian language, as well as access to Ukrainian-language mass media and special "civil, social, cultural, and religious rights."
Moscow has never imposed any restrictions on the Ukrainian language. Russia's education minister, Sergey Kravtsov, said in July 2022 that "no one was banning" it, and that it would be taught in schools where necessary.
Zelensky's decree also tasks the Ukrainian government and the National Security and Defense Council with "collecting and studying facts and testimonies about crimes" supposedly committed against Ukrainians in Russia throughout its history, as well as "countering disinformation and propaganda" about Ukrainian history, allegedly spread by Moscow.
The president also instructed the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences to "prepare materials" on the "thousand-year-old history" of Ukraine and distribute them around the world. The country's educational programs and textbooks should also contain "the true history of ethnic Ukrainians," Zelensky added.
The Russian regions mentioned in the decree have repeatedly been targeted by Ukrainian missile and drone attacks as well as shelling since the start of hostilities with Moscow in February 2022. Zelensky's decree comes just weeks after Kiev launched a major attack on the city of Belgorod. The strike, which according to the Russian Defense Ministry involved the use of banned cluster munitions, claimed the lives of 25 people, including children, and left more than a hundred injured.
In mid-January, a child was injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on the city of Voronezh - the capital of another region Zelensky claimed was "historically inhabited by Ukrainians."
The developments come amid Kiev's attempts to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) - the country's biggest Christian denomination, which is reported to have more than 8,000 parishes. The Ukrainian government has long accused it of having ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Ukraine in its pre-2014 borders was largely "created" by the Soviet leadership over the course of the 20th century. Historically, "Ukrainian lands" included a much smaller territory, he has argued.
When the Cossacks living on the territory of modern Ukraine broke away from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century following the Bogdan Khmelnitsky uprising and asked the then-Tsardom of Russia to take them in, the territory they controlled effectively amounted to present-day Kiev, Chernigov, and Zhitomir regions - three areas in the north of Ukraine, the Russian president said in 2022.
3) Going back in history, which country lost the most people during
WWI? The Wiki says it was Russia, (2,840,000 to 3,394,369) which at the time included much of Ukraine. The
Russian Civil War (7 November 1917 - 25 October 1922), required from both sides a combined 3 million lives. During the Soviet Union and
WWII the number of lives lost was about 27 million.
Given that
Experts warned for decades that NATO expansion would lead to war: Why did nobody listen to them? and that
NATO-Russia confrontation 'could last decades' - Stoltenberg it is too early to say how many lives will be lost in the current conflict which so far has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of refugees and displaced people.
There is also the possibility that the loss of life will spread. One indication might be:
EU lost $1.5 trillion in revenue due to anti-Russia sanctions and the tendency among the countries which finance the war in Ukraine to defund their own social services and infrastructure projects in favour of military related expenses.
Comment:
1) The author wrote: "the concept of identity is perhaps the main issue in the current conflict." Other points could have been included. Below are some themes and topics as found in older SOTT articles:
About the intention of the West to break up and control Russia:
- Best of the Web: Anti-Putin Russian outlet fact-checks Putin's claim that Lenin conspired with the US to break up Russia into smaller countries... and finds it to be true!
- U.S. strategic aim: Break and dismember Russia; or maintain U.S. dollar hegemony? Or a muddled 'both'?Washington's long-standing plan to break up Russia
- US gov't body plots to break up Russia in name of 'decolonization'
- Canada Day special: How a 'synthetic nationalism' was created to break the US-Russia alliance
- Politics of resentment: Latvian MP calls for break-up of Russia - proof of NATO's hostile intentions, says Russian lawmaker
- US aims to financially break Russia with arms race
- Kissinger: U.S. objective is to break Russia
- SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Wall Street and the Russian Revolution, with Richard B. Spence
- Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: Bankers and industrialists in the U.S., UK and Germany created, funded and maintained the Soviet Union
Related to the history of the conflict in Ukraine:- The covert Anglo-American origins of color revolutions & the NED' Muddling and meddling'? US, EU politicians plunge deeper into Kiev protest
- SOTT Focus: John Pilger: The Great Game of Smashing Nations
- 'The Holodomor': How Ukraine distorted the history of a tragic Soviet famine to help build its modern national myth
- Best of the Web: The Real History of the War in Ukraine
- Historian Egor Kholmogorov: The intertwined roots of history explain why Russia can't let go of Ukraine
- Flashback Best of the Web: To Catch a Nazi: The Secret History of Ukraine's Extensive Nazi Network, And How The US Government Gave Them Safe Harbor
- SOTT Focus: Ukraine: The Country Where History Died
- Best of the Web: History Points to the US as Perpetrator of Crisis in Ukraine
- The history of Ukraine as an artificial state
- The History of Western Ukraine
- Fake News: NYT op-ed whitewashes history of US meddling in Ukraine
- Is the BBC posting fake history on behalf of Ukraine nationalists?
- Sorting out the history of Ukraine's conflict
- The falsification of history: "Ukraine" is not an independent country
- The history of Ukraine from the Soviet collapse to a neo-Nazi dystopia
- US narrative on Ukraine obscures geopolitical realities and regional history
- How Ukraine's Yatsenyuk sees the world: 'Soviets invaded Germany and Ukraine, Putin trying to rewrite WW2 history'
- Oliver Stone: U.S.'s narrative of events in Ukraine a "surreal perversion of history"
- Russia and Ukraine: Painful rift with history and current crisis
- US/Nazi collaboration: Ukraine and worldwide history repeats - interview with Prof Barry Lituchy
- Best of the Web: Nazism: History is repeating itself in Ukraine
- SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: 'Revolution' in Ukraine: A history of manufactured chaos
- Real revolution is the only thing that can save Ukraine from American chaos creation
- Best of the Web: Maidan snipers: The founding myth of 'new' Ukraine has been proven to be a lie. Why is the West silent?
- Seeing the unseen in Ukraine: Why is the US sending arms just as the MINSK II agreements are making some progress?
- The big lie behind modern Ukraine: Why does Kiev refuse to properly investigate the mysterious 2014 'Maidan massacre'?
2) From the same source, there was two weeks before the article by Petr Lavrenin: 3) Going back in history, which country lost the most people during WWI? The Wiki says it was Russia, (2,840,000 to 3,394,369) which at the time included much of Ukraine. The Russian Civil War (7 November 1917 - 25 October 1922), required from both sides a combined 3 million lives. During the Soviet Union and WWII the number of lives lost was about 27 million.Given that Experts warned for decades that NATO expansion would lead to war: Why did nobody listen to them? and that NATO-Russia confrontation 'could last decades' - Stoltenberg it is too early to say how many lives will be lost in the current conflict which so far has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of refugees and displaced people.
There is also the possibility that the loss of life will spread. One indication might be: EU lost $1.5 trillion in revenue due to anti-Russia sanctions and the tendency among the countries which finance the war in Ukraine to defund their own social services and infrastructure projects in favour of military related expenses.