This flag is old and Ukrainian and there is some history behind it.
It goes back further than Nazi supported Ukrainian units in the second world war.
But once you march with a real nazi your always going to be called a nazi.
The modern flag is blue and yellow ( blue for the sky yellow for the fields of wheat and Rye I think but that could just be my interpretation ).
The first lines of their national anthem mean something to the effect that they have not perished or lost their freedom ( not all that different from the Polish anthem in that regards )
Think how history has effected these people that they state in the first lines they are still alive and kicking fighting for their land and freedom.
That means they have been fighting a long time eh?
Depending on how old you are everyone who was raised in the east block learned some Russian…
There’s a Hungarian girl my age I work with that learned and retained just enough from her Russian studdies class that I have to watch what I say in mixed use of Polish and Ukrainian cursing and swearing. ( Some, especially swear words are pretty easy to walk back and forth in Russian Polish Ukrainian and get a meaning )
So this was a very common thing.
Russia used to be an empire that contained Poland, Finland, Ukraine and Belorussian.
Non of these people are really crazy about that or were in the past.
The Russian solution to this was deportation and assimilation as well as Emigration.
Thats how you end up with Estonia having 10% of the population speaking Russian as their mother tongue.
There have been attempts in the past to make Ukraine and Belorussian INTO Russians by forced assimilation…
Remember when the name of Kyiv was Kiev? Back in the day the name was Russianized
The cyrilic alphabet is not the same between all these countries but again Russia tried to standardize it.
In Russian this is G ---- г In Ukrainian that is not G it makes an H sound so pronunciations were distorted…
There are letters in some language and not others…
This makes reading it kind of interesting if your not fluent.( I have to walk it back and forth to figure out what a word is pronounced like and then try and understand the word in painfully slow and hard… )
So imagine your Scottish Irish and have a language and culture thats kind of the same but your forced to become the same as the English…
You might not like this and reverence lasts generations over it… ( even blood is spilled ).
In the same breath many people are by-lingual, you don’t get much of this in America.
But where I live I hear conversations that drift back and forth between English and french or Fin and English.
I hear conversations that wander back and forth between people who speak one slavic dialect and might borrow some Russian to fill in a gap with someone from another country…
I had a conversation like that one time with a chum of mine except I was reading off some polish and from a box and he was correcting me with Ukrainian ( because my polish is real bad and he was confused by it… Silesia, no one knows what we are saying )
This means left to your device most people will pretty much use the language of convenience if there is more than one language at play
So how this all fits into whats happening in Ukraine?
Well turns out most people that live in Ukraine are pretty happy with how things are and don’t want to made into Russian’s they have their own culture and even if they speak Russian ( like their president ) they self identify as Ukrainians first not Russians.
Russia however likes to think group think that everyone else is just speaking Russian badly and want to be part of Russia again…
This is not the case.
So in short I can probably go to some place in Belorussia and not speak the language but pick out borrow words and cultural similarities between all three countries but they are not the same people.
( I can probably order a plate Biggos and a beer in Minsk and get what I wanted and thank them in something they understand as a thank you and make out a lot better than if I tried to fake my way through a menu in Greece and or something… )
But of course everyone will try and communicate thats human nature.
Forcing someone to speak your language and adopt your culture and habits in your own land will not get you good service…
From a Russian perspective they have lost an empire and been kicked by the west when they were down.
Trying to put some of that right by gathering all the Russian speaking people under one flag might make that sore bum feel better.
Might not though…
There are probably some people who would be happy to live in Russia instead but I can’t imagine why with a president like Putin and all the corruption.
There is also the Russian preoccupation with the idea that Kyiv is the birth place of Russia.
Thats probably true because once this was the centre of Russia like country at one time.
But its not the same as today.
Once there was a Polish Empire that stretch across Ukraine the way to Lithuania.
Thats why I can order that plate full of Biggos in Minsk and they know what I want.
But that does not mean they are any more Polish than they are Russian…
Everyone wants their own patch land and people that they feel comfortable around and can speak too easily in their country.
We have this in Canada in spite of cultural and linguistic differences.
You have this in America too when you look at the numbers of people that speak Spanish or even Spanglish…
Its not something you fight a civil war over is it?
Nope…
And America is not trying to Invade Canada because you think we would be better off as Americans.
Too bad Russia can’t be more like America, and I am so glad I live next to America though I rather no live in America… You know.
Its called good neighbours.
Russia is a bad neighbour what can I say…
That is yet another political piece from me, over simplistic too but maybe it helps.
Sorry if I have distorted history for an American audience for our Ukrainian friends…
They just didn’t hang them, as they promised, but burned alive those who looked like you.
They just didn’t hang them, as they promised, but burned alive those who looked like you.
Украина Online
