On June 30, on a direct line, Vladimir Putin again called Russians and Ukrainians “united people”. Russian Russian and Ukrainian languages two weeks later, on July 12, the President published an article-analysis entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” on the Kremlin’s website, in Russian and in Ukrainian.
“Modern Ukraine is entirely the brainchild of the Soviet era, it was largely created at the expense of historical Russia, the Bolsheviks robbed Russia,” — the article says.
The article includes the history of Ukraine and Russia, facts, dates and events taken from history textbooks, “tales of bygone years” and encyclopedias, which the president himself calls “open documents that contain well-known facts”.
“Both Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are the heirs of Ancient Russia, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes in a huge area-from Ladoga, Novgorod, Pskov to Kiev and Chernihiv-were united by one language (now we call it Old Russian), economic ties, the power of the princes of the Rurik dynasty. And after the baptism of Russia — and one Orthodox faith.”
“Anti-Russia” or the new name of Ukraine
The text caused a great resonance, including from Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky believes that his words do not correspond to reality and commented that Vladimir Putin wrote a rather voluminous and serious article that Zelensky himself has not yet finished reading.
The President of Ukraine also said that Ukraine and Russia are “definitely not one people”.
“It is impossible to simultaneously talk about” one people” and openly seize our territories and continue the slaughter in the Donbass,” — Zelensky said when he was asked about Putin’s article.
The key idea of Vladimir Putin is that since the time of ancient Russia, people who lived in modern Belarusian and Ukrainian territories, and the territory of Russia, felt like one people, and only much later, under the influence of other countries and conflicts, the countries became independent.
“I think it’s important that we could talk about some things. Probably, I would have provided him with a lot of different materials, which can also be used in another article, in the future,” — Zelensky told reporters.
In the article, Putin also mentioned that a project is being implemented in Ukraine under the supervision of the West — «anti-Russia».
The speaker of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, spoke about this as follows: “Russia has never been and will never be “anti-Ukraine”. And what Ukraine should be like is up to its citizens to decide””
In addition, the Russian president responded to Vladimir Zelensky’s proposal to discuss his article about Ukrainians in an extremely unambiguous way: “It will be quite difficult to argue with this article, because it is honest. It is really based on historical documents.”
“The anti-Russia project was rejected by millions of residents of Ukraine. Crimeans and residents of Sevastopol have made their historical choice … <…>…They began to threaten ethnic cleansing and the use of military force. And the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk took up arms to protect their home, language, and their lives,” — the article says.
“It caused a great response in the military environment”
On July 15, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered the inclusion of an article by President Vladimir Putin “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” as one of the topics of military-political training in the army. This is reported by a source of the Ministry of Defense.
Realizing the attention paid to the article, it was decided to include it in the list of mandatory topics of military-political training.
Ukraine has been one of the most discussed topics in social networks over the past 7 years, starting with the Crimea and ending with the war in eastern Ukraine. This was the reason for discussions, reviews and opinions of experts and historians.
