Russia committing cultural genocide in occupied Ukraine territories

A woman walks past a damaged building in Mariupol, April 1, 2022. [Xinhua]

Russia keeps attacking Ukrainian ports, and Ukrainian bulk carriers with grain and doesn’t bother to explain these actions: It’s a terror in the purest, clearest form.

And it was not the “Ukrainian-Russian conflict” that caused it, as some analysts put it. This notion is wrong due to the fact that Ukraine has never started any war, never in its history. It’s the unprovoked and unjustified Russian aggression against Ukraine that has caused repercussions all around the globe. 

Food security for everyone and reliability as a food supplier, has always been our motto. It’s what we are, it’s in our genes, a true part of us like the fact that Ukraine has always been a part of the Europe.

Our first alliance with the European family is more then a metaphor, it’s a fact, carved in history. Yet another evidence to that is the famous Gospel of Reims; that Kyivan Rus (in fact, Ukrainian) princess Anna, daughter of our Prince Yaroslav the Wise, was brought to France, becoming its Queen. But before coming to France she met our colleagues, the French diplomats of that forlorn epoch (and it was the middle of 11th century), his Ukrainian lady mastered the French language.

Being a queen or a princess or any citizen of a civilised country, every human being is obliged to speak the language of the land she or he decides to live in. That is what makes the basic difference between the human world and that of the beasts: The language, the second signal system.

Nowadays, many languages are spoken in our country: Ukrainian, Russian, Crimean Tatar, Hebrew, Polish, Greek. None of these languages are prohibited, never in the history of independent Ukraine was there a moment when the government or any other player has restricted the use of a language of the national minority. Never except for once, when the Russian government started a deliberate policy to eradicate the Ukrainian language from public life in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Today, under the Russian occupation, a negligible 0.1 per cent of school children in Crimea are taught in Ukrainian language. Russia has prohibited Ukrainian language in schools and kindergartens in occupied territories while implanting Russian language everywhere it can. It’s us who are facing the cultural genocide, not the Russians.

There’s another unpleasant news for Russia that it always fails to acknowledge. Indeed, we have many cultural ties with Russia, as many Ukrainians helped to develop its infrastructure in the Soviet times, when Ukraine was, de-facto, colonised by the Moscow regime and Ukrainians as well as many other nations were used as slaves building the gas pipes and chopping the wood in the dead of Siberian winter, while being forced to speak Russian, just like our children in the occupied territories are forced to now. And yes, almost all of us are bilingual because of colonial Russian policies and now quite a few Ukrainian soldiers fighting for their land are Russian speakers. Ask any of them whether they need Vladimir Putin’s protection to live freely and speak their language: They will laugh in your face.

Some analysts quote the fake news coming from Russia that Ukraine wanted to join NATO and that posed a threat to Russia. But only recently, two other European states, Finland and Sweden, which are neutral and have never posed a threat to Russia, joined the block to guarantee their security.

Isn’t it crazy? NATO has expanded but has never been attacked by the Moscow regime, while it was Ukraine that was invaded in the most inhuman, brutal way.

Lastly, as I have already mentioned, Ukrainian princesses who became a French queen in medieval times learned the language of the country. The modern world with all it’s complexity still has the same basic rule. Imagine coming to France or Germany without learning their language first. Do you go there as a partner, a friend or as a colonist; an invader? Answer this question and you will answer the fundamental question about this war.

Ukraine is facing a neo-colonial war with Russia having an insane ambition to become a new empire and destroy every basic human right starting with the most sacred of all: The right for freedom.