Media Uses in Ukraine’s War with Itself
Published in S.F. Krishna-Hensel (Ed.), Media in Process: Transformation and
Democratic Transition (pp. 31-52). London and New York: Routledge, 2016.
Mikhail A. Molchanov, St. Thomas University, Canada
Introduction
The media war in Ukraine and about Ukraine has been in full rage since the early days of the
Maidan – a popular campaign of civil disobedience in the centre of Kiev that turned violent and
led to the eventual ouster of the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. It
has been also noted that the start of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict soon thereafter and Russia’s
annexation of Crimea was precipitated by intense media campaigns in both countries. These
media wars then spread to the West and morphed into a series of confrontations between Ukraine
and Russia, Russia and the West, and Ukraine together with the West against Russia and its
allies, including Russia-sympathetic analysts in the West. Heated narratives targeted all sides to
the conflict and made the search for a compromise nearly impossible.
The Maidan revolution was prepared and directed through a propagandistic campaign unleashed
by the opponents of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine and abroad. Just like the Arab
revolutions of 2010-2011, the Ukrainian “revolution of dignity” made an extensive use of the
internet and social media: Twitter, Facebook, the predominantly Russian-speaking VKontakte,
Instagram and others. At the same time, several ostensibly independent or semi-independent
television stations, such as Channel 5, Espresso TV, and Hromadske TV soon appeared the
leading force of the anti-government campaign and precipitated the eventual ouster of President
Yanukovych.
In most cases, these TV channels have been financed by the parties who found themselves on the
wrong side of the so-called Donetsk clan of capitalists and powerbrokers that Yanukovych
represented at the time. Thus, Channel 5 has been controlled by Petro Poroshenko, the current
President of Ukraine who had invested significant personal resources in support of the Maidan
uprising. Espresso TV was created specifically with the purpose to bring the protests in the
central square of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to the world audience, and has been financed by several
deputies of the “Fatherland,” the anti-government party established by the former Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko. Hromadske (“public”) television benefitted from grants extended by the
Dutch and American embassies, the Soros Foundations and others.
From the very beginning of the Maidan occupation, the events in Kyiv were both publicized and
coordinated principally by the two internet resources: the internet newspaper Ukrainska Pravda
and the internet portal Ukrnet. The first one has long been affiliated with critical journalism and
received extensive support from USAID, the Soros Foundations and other western granting
agencies. The second is co-owned by Vitaly Klitschko’s friend and fellow UDAR politician
Artur Palatnyi. Both news sources had long been critical of the Yanukovych government and
1
took a decidedly anti-government position well before the Maidan events started. After Maidan’s
victory, politicians associated with these internet resources have made full use of the sympathetic
media backing to get propelled to the positions of power in the new, post-revolutionary
government.
Media has also been on the forefront in Ukraine’s confrontation with Russia. The appearance of
the Russian troops without insignia in the streets of the Crimean cities and the annexation of
Crimea in March 2014 changed the attitude to Russia for good and resulted in polarization of the
Ukrainian society: not so much along the lines of language or ethnicity as along the line of
support or opposition to the claims of Russian cultural autonomy within Ukraine. This
polarization gave birth to the pro-Russian separatist movement in the East of Ukraine, which
Moscow could not afford to ignore. Crimea’s annexation and not-so-tacit support of separatism
in a neighboring country resulted in a massive campaign of ostracism and western sanctions.
Russia was depicted as an imperialist, revisionist, war-mongering state. Russia’s attempts to
draw international attention to the unconstitutionality of the February 2014 coup in Ukraine and
the plight of the civilian population caught between the rock of separatism and the hard place of
Ukrainian “antiterrorist operation” fell on deaf ears. Instead, both western and Ukrainian media
launched a vigorous campaign of demonization of all things Russian and Russia-related – from
the government in the Kremlin to the ostensibly subservient civil society, from Russia’s greedy
oligarchs and to the Russian Orthodox Church – and used this campaign to cover their own
mistakes in managing internal affairs in Ukraine and the post-cold war regional order in the
whole of Eastern Europe.
The very first sprouts of the indigenous pro-Russian movement in Ukraine’s East prompted
speculations on the topic of whether or not “Russia had invaded Ukraine.” Intensification of the
anti-government hostilities in Donbass added to the tensions between the two countries and
between Russia and the rest of the world. Meanwhile, neither Russia nor Ukraine had officially
declared a war on each other, and periodic pronouncements by Ukrainian politicians and pundits
of Russia’s waging a war against Ukraine are regularly refuted in Moscow. Thus, Prime Minister
Yatsenyuk’s statement that “we are at war with a nuclear power… protecting not only our state
but the world order and European security” got this commentary in the Russian media:
In the information space of Ukraine, USA and their allies, including many EU
states, media hysteria has been constantly promoted. Some statements are
completely idiotic. The statement by Yatsenyuk about [Ukraine’s] war with a
nuclear power – the Russian Federation – belongs to the latter category. However,
this hysteria has a definite purpose: it indicates preparations for a real war (TV
Zvezda 2015).
The war-like rhetoric in the Ukrainian and Russian media and the bellicose diatribes on
the Facebook pages and its locally popular equivalents, such as VK or LiveJournal.ru,
contrast sharply with the fact that the two countries keep embassies at each other
territories. In addition to the Embassy of Ukraine in Moscow, two Consulates General
and two Consulates function, as before, in St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk
and Yekaterinburg respectively. In turn, Russia maintains an Embassy in Kiev,
Consulates General in Kharkiv, Lviv and Odessa, and an Honorary Consulate in
Chernihiv. According to Ukraine’s official statistics, the trade turnout between the two
2
countries in 2014, albeit 40 percent lower than the year before, still stood at US$22,478
million, not a negligible number by any count. There have been neither aerial raids, nor
bombardments nor shelling of each other’s cities, no attempt to open a front line along
the whole stretch of the Ukrainian-Russian border. Against a familiar picture of an
international conflict, this is a strange war indeed.
However, Ukraine’s campaign of media attacks on Russia and the pro-Russian separatists in
Donbass, Eastern Ukraine, serves to support continuation of the so-called “antiterrorist operation
(ATO)” against the rebels – operation that inflicts colossal suffering on the civilian population of
the separatist-controlled enclave. As for the increasingly vociferous Russian media, attacks on
the presumed western conspiracy in Ukraine and presentation of the current government in Kiev
as a “junta,” as western puppets or “fascists,” or both, go a long way to mobilize not only public
opinion, but willing (and well-armed) volunteers to participate in the anti-government rebellion
in Ukraine’s East. All sides to this conflict combine the usage of the government-controlled
media, the ostensibly independent pro-government sources and the social media that appears
surprisingly coherent and intolerant of the dissenting voices in all instances when a hashtag or a
commenting campaign seems to be started by people with a clear allegiance or sympathy to this
or that party.
While facts of the Russian involvement in helping the anti-government uprising in
Donbass multiply, Moscow keeps denying any role in the conflict, which it officially
deems Ukraine’s internal affair. The western press responds by accusing Putin and
Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov of lies, which, in turn, drives up anti-western hysteria
in the Russian press. It is fair to say that, thanks to this dynamics of accusations and
counter-accusations, insults and counter-insults, western fears of Russia’s launching a
new “cold war” against the West became a self-fulfilling prophecy (Lucas, 2009;
Mankoff, 2012).
Western journalism feeds of a long and venerable tradition of Russian studies in the
West, studies of Russian foreign policy in particular. These studies have been subject to
some unyielding myths and misconceptions. One of the more popular ones is the idea of
that Russia’s foreign policy never changes and is always motivated by the imperialist,
mentality. Typically such accusations attribute the “imperialist, expansionist” qualities to
Russian national identity, something that presumably characterizes Russian nation as
such. Of course, if expansionism is, so to say, in the Russian blood, there can be no
reasoning or negotiating with such people. The only correct course of actions is
sanctions, isolation and containment.
However, isolation and containment breeds resentment and hostility. Western policies aimed at
disciplining the presumably imperialist Russia and Ukrainian nationalist law making that aims to
deprive Ukraine’s local Russians of their language, culture and history may well be enough to
push the country that had no interests in any territorial expansion whatsoever over the tipping
point. When the hostile rhetoric makes a compromise impossible, the government may take a
pre-emptive action in the face of an external threat. This is how annexation of the Crimea started
in the first place – in response to the unconstitutional coup disguised as a popular revolution by
its western and domestic sponsors.
3
Accusations of “neo-imperialism” hurled against Russia serve to hide truly imperialist policies of
the United States, the creeping growth of the NATO alliance, and the rise of the Russophobic
nationalist movements in newly independent states, such as Ukraine. The idea that Russia’s
imperialism is somehow preprogrammed by its historical past blinds the researchers and the
general public to the largely reactive character of Russian foreign policy. When denunciations of
Russia’s “creeping authoritarianism,” “aggressive intentions” and the like appear center stage in
the media and get accepted as a matter of intellectual fashion, they sway politicians and dictate
the course of international relations. Russia gets ostracized and marginalized by western powers,
but in the process Russian politicians and general public learn to embrace these accusations of
imperialism as Russia’s true national identity and start acting accordingly. This is how selffulfilling prophecies come about. In what follows, I will trace the construction of the “Russian
enemy” image in the western and Ukrainian media, and will argue for a dialogue based on a
more accommodating approach to Russia and the Russians in Ukraine. It should be stated with
all clarity that the purpose of this argument is not to represent Russia’s actions in the Crimea as
legitimate or Russia’s supply of heavy weaponry to the separatists as excusable. Rather, the
purpose of this analysis is to try and understand the dynamics behind the militant construction of
an enemy that stops all attempts at negotiations in their tracks.
The Western media war on Russia
Western media has depicted President Putin as an antipode of all that is good and decent in
international relations, as “evil enough” (Motyl, 2014) to merit comparisons with neo-Nazi and
Ku Klux Klan. There have been several articles comparing Putin to Hitler and calling for the US
to “move troops and aircraft into Ukraine within 24 hours” (Johnson, 2014). No lesser politicians
and notables than Prince Charles and Hillary Clinton resorted to such unsavory comparisons,
arguing, as Prince Charles did, that “now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler,” or, as
Senator McCain, “if Putin is allowed to go into a sovereign nation on behalf of Russian-speaking
people, this is the same thing that Hitler did prior to World War II” (Kelley, 2014).
At the August 2014 meeting in Brussels Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite declared that
Russia was “at war with Europe.” The German chancellor Angela Merkel continued her attack
on the Russian president, which started with her March 2014 accusations of him living “in
another world” (Baker, 2014). The EU summit saw her repeating her claim that Putin was
“irrational” and “unpredictable.” David Cameron warned his counterparts in the EU that the
West could not repeat a mistake of “appeasing” the Russian leader over Ukraine and drew
explicit parallels to the infamous Munich Agreement of western powers with Hitler in September
1938 (Traynor and MacAskill, 2014).
The comparison was ludicrous to say the least, but nonetheless repeated again and again, both in
the West and in the now-Russophobic Ukraine. As more than one perceptive analyst noted, no
matter how unlawful annexing the Crimea in the wake of the Ukrainian revolution was, there is a
big distance between the opportunistic, one-off violation of international law in the situation of
post-revolutionary turmoil and shaky government legitimacy in the affected country and the
genocidal, racist dictatorship bent on world domination.
4
As a British anti-war group argues, it was not Putin who sought to destabilize Ukraine or depose
its democratically elected, albeit corrupt, president Yanukovych. It was not Russian, but the EU
politicians who forced an “either-or” choice on Ukraine. Russia did not organize or arm the
right-wing groups among the Maidan protesters who started deadly shoot-outs that led to the
eventual collapse of the Yanukovych regime. Putin did not force Ukrainian parliamentarians to
legitimize the ouster of the president by a simple vote in an unconstitutional, illegitimate
procedure – the armed Maidan activists provided a visible incentive to vote the “right way”.
Putin did not push the Verkhovna Rada, now dominated by the anti-Russian nationalists, to vote
for the annulment of a law that gave limited local rights of native language usage to the Russianspeaking citizens of Ukraine. In the situation of a dubious legitimacy of a new, postrevolutionary government in Kiev, Putin felt the need to protect both ethnic Russians of the
formerly Russian Crimean Autonomous Republic and the nuclear assets of the Russian Black
Sea Fleet from what he saw as the government of irresponsible thugs (Parry, 2015).
However, the western propaganda is notorious for its invocation of the Hitler comparison each
time a leader whose priorities run against the western interests or desires attempts to resist the
truly imperialist onslaught of the world’s last remaining superpower and its European allies. The
purpose of such comparisons is clear to any unbiased observer. Hence, this call from people who
try to preserve the remnants of much celebrated western media impartiality, while understanding
the inevitability of a new round of marginalization and demonization of the presumed opponent:
Let’s resist the Hitler comparisons, which intend simply to shut down any
reasoned discussion, to demonize all those who are not hawks, and to ratchet up
tension. Soon enough, though, western leaders will settle on a new enemy number
one, and the Hitler comparisons will begin all over again. (Jones, 2014)
And yet, the attacks on Russia and Putin personally have not ceased. Chancellor Merkel resorted
to a homegrown psychoanalysis of the Russian president, claiming that “he acts the way he does
to ‘prove he’s a man’” (Ernst, 2014). A Bloomberg commentator, drawing on a classic fantasy
novel, endeavored to compare “Putin’s Russia” to “Tolkien’s Mordor” and failed to see the
difference (Bershidsky, 2014). American editorials typically describe Russian actions in Ukraine
as “aggression”, “direct intervention” and “Putin’s war in Ukraine” without providing any shred
of evidence that Russian citizens detected amidst the Donbass rebels are not, in fact, volunteers,
as claimed by Moscow, but rather regular troops operating under direct orders from the Kremlin.
At the same time, the “anti-terrorist operation” unleashed by Kiev against the separatists at a
considerable cost to the civilian lives in Donbass gets sympathetic treatment in the western
media.
Western demonization of the Russian president helps create that image of an enemy that justifies
western neo-imperialist geopolitics and geoeconomics. The first one has to do with, at a
minimum, containment and, at a maximum, removal from power of any leader asserting
independent domestic and foreign policies in the face of desperate attempts by the West to
prolong its global hegemony. The second one, with securing new sales markets and resource
appendages for the transnational capitalist interests that are still centered on the USA. Against
such a background, an assessment by Putin” press secretary Dmitry Peskov reads rather
convincing: “The more insistently any leader of our country secures its interests and the more
5
persistently he defends the rights of our country in the international arena, the more he is
demonized in the world” (Sonne, 2015).
Apart from Putin’s unwelcome (to the West) assertiveness, western Russophobia has, in fact,
deep historical roots. Russia has been Europe’s Other for centuries – a nation that was neither
“one of us” nor “one of them.” It was Christian, but not a part of the western Christendom
dominated by the Bishop of Rome. It was European, yet embraced Tatar khans and co-opted
numerous Asian strongmen into the ranks of hereditary nobility. It created cultural chefs
d’oeuvre of all-European significance, but followed in the steps of great Asian empires to a much
larger degree than in the steps of fragmented, internally divided European kingdoms. From the
times of the Kievan Rus and to the modern times, Eastern Slavs and their later Muscovite and
Russian descendants resisted all attempts to be conquered by the ostensibly more “civilized”
western powers: the Teutonic crusaders in the 13the century, the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth in the 17th century, the kingdom of Sweden, the Napoleonic France, the
Kaiser’s and the Nazi Germany. Understandably, this resistance caused great frustration to all the
carriers of the western “mission civilisatrice” and prompted renewed assimilationist zeal on their
part. As Russian people and Russian rulers refused to assimilate, the condescending attitude of
the West got replaces with barely hidden hatred and fear. Russophobia (literally, the fear of
Russia and the Russians) plays well with the established western tradition of treating Russia as a
“barbarian at Europe’s gate,” a constant historical “irregularity” (Neumann, 1999: 103, 110), an
irredeemable alien and, in the final end, an existential enemy.
In the years of the Soviet-American opposition Russia’s “otherness” was re-appropriated and put
to new uses by the US politicians, mainstream media and pundits. More recently, a group of
professional cold warriors, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney and John McCain have
rediscovered it once again. As noted by Andrei Tsygankov (2009: 105-106), one of the longstanding ideas of anti-Russian lobby in the US foreign policy establishment has been the one of
breaking the Russia-Ukraine connection and tying Ukraine at Russia’s expense to the West.
Therefore, the Ukrainian politicians’ attempts to suppress Russians in the east of the country and
to break good-neighborly relations with Russia proper get a sympathetic response in the West
from the advocates of the Euro-Atlantic hegemony, the liberal hawks and the militant western
values promoters, as well as historically Russophobic Eastern European nationalists (Tsygankov,
2009: 13-14).
The cold war that the West started with Russia over the annexation of Crimea provoked intense
nationalistic reaction across wide strata of the Russian society. Thus, the Russian perceptions of
the West deteriorate, the anti-western rhetoric on TV get a sympathetic ear of mass audience, and
the western predictions about the emergence of an alienated, hostile Russia become a selffulfilling prophecy. Parallel to that, indiscriminate brow-beating of Russia in the western media
sends a powerful signal to the new, pro-western government in Ukraine and reinforces the antiRussian vilification zeal there. It is important to remember that Ukraine’s influential allies in the
West, especially the right-wing Ukrainian diaspora organizations across the Anglo-American
world, have always “considered Russia, both tsarist and communist, their historical enemy
because it had been the prime oppressor of Ukraine’s freedom” (Ukrainian Canadian Congress
n.d., Community profile). With such an uncompromising characterization, the westward-looking
members of the ruling class in Ukraine have no choice but to join the chorus of Russia-bashers
6
which, for all intents and purposes, appears the only western gentlemen’s club willing to admit
Ukraine’s new elites on their present merits.
Russophobic rhetoric in Ukraine
From the very beginning of the Maidan demonstrations in Kiev’s central square, the liberaldemocratic opposition to the Yanukovych regime co-existed with the Ukrainian nationalist right,
whose primary target of hate was Russia and the pro-Russian citizens of Ukraine. If the first
group of demonstrators mobilized against corruption in the government and creeping
authoritarianism of the regime, the second group mobilized against the president who they saw
as a Russian puppet. Both groups pinned their hopes on Ukraine’s signing an Association
agreement with the European Union: the liberals, because they thought the agreement would
pave the way to westernization of the Ukrainian legal system and halt the development of
increasingly unaccountable super-presidentialist system, and the nationalists, because they
believed the agreement with the EU would take the country away from the Russian sphere of
influence.
When Putin used some strong-arm tactics to make Yanukovych abandon his European promises
to the electorate, both groups were taken aback. The nationalists had long seen Russia as the
source of all Ukrainian troubles, and received what looked to them as just one more confirmation
of the truth they already knew. The liberals, on the other hand, although not intrinsically
Russophobic, were turned against Putin’s Russia as the country that not only lagged behind in its
own democratic development, but sought to prevent its neighbours from liberalizing by means of
association with the EU. Thus, Russophobia, in a sense of hatred of Putin’s regime and its close
associates in Ukraine, became a rallying banner for liberals and nationalists alike. Russia’s
annexation of the Crimea cemented these feelings and made their public expression de rigeur for
all public offices, media and academia in Ukraine.
Very soon, the criticism of the Kremlin’s policies in Ukraine morphed into the criticism of all
things characteristic of the Russian political spectrum, and soon thereafter, of equally
condescending attitude to the Russian society at large and its supporters in Ukraine. Once the
pro-Russian opponents of the Maidan revolutionaries attempted to press for some form of a
vigorous regional autonomy in the East, they were immediately branded terrorists and national
traitors, Moscow’s “fifth column” and the like.
The start of the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” (ATO), which sent Ukraine’s regular army
against anti-Maidan demonstrators in Donbass, helped transform peaceful protests into a violent
guerilla movement. Parallel to that, the state-sponsored and state-encouraged campaign of
vilification of the pro-Russian activists in Ukraine intensified. Putin’s Russia, driven into a
corner with its own nationalistic rhetoric of protection of the “compatriots in the near abroad,”
could not but respond to the ATO with tacit arms and volunteers’ supply to the Donbass
separatists. As Russia’s involvement into Ukraine’s internal conflict increased, so did
demonization of Russia in the Ukrainian media.
Ukrainian journalists have represented the Russian Federation as “a country of the insane,” “a
biggest madhouse on Earth” (Kostyk, 2014), a “Mordor” (Presa Ukraïny, 2014), “a special
7
operation writ large” (Golovakha, 2014) and “a large gas pump with atomic missiles” (Lutsenko,
2014). The later designation and the “Mordor” metaphor, reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s
“empire of evil,” became popular in both Ukrainian and western press and were repeated by the
western politicians.
Moreover, both the “madhouse” and the “Mordor” monikers crept into public pronouncements of
Ukraine’s political elite: ministers, spokespersons for the government and the like. An advisor to
Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Oleksandr Danyliuk has vowed to engage the relatives of the
Russian army volunteers fighting on the separatist side in Donbas “so that they would become
the principal anti-war activists in Mordor” (Vidomosti, 2014). The Minister of Interior has
answered the question on probability of Russia’s direct intervention in Ukraine by representing it
as “a type of question of when the madman might yield to the next round of convulsions” (The
Insider, 2014). The deputy governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region Borys Filatov refers to
Russia’s leaders as “the Kremlin bastards” (Kostyk, 2014). The Minister of Foreign Affairs calls
Russian president a “d---head” (Culzac, 2014). All of this gets sympathetic press in the West,
which, in turn, reinforces the vilification zeal back in Ukraine.
The use of the Russophobic rhetoric by Ukrainian nationalists is nothing new and goes back to
the very origin of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. However, at no time before through the
quarter century of the independent Ukrainian statehood did the intensity of the Russia-bashing at
the hands of the state come close to the spiteful vitriol of the unabashedly supremacist
ethnonationalist far right. Equally, at no time in recent years did the mythology of Ukraine’s
unique antiquity and separate from Russia’s history make such inroads in the public space and
public discourse as to become the staple of almost any journalistic discussion of the UkrainianRussian relations today.
This historical revisionism denies Russia its Kievan roots in an attempt to disunite Ukrainians
and Russians as two nations fully foreign to each other, with completely separate histories and
identities. The idea that Ukraine is part of Europe, while the “Eurasian” Russia is not, can be
found right at the beginning of a long tradition of Russophobic scholarship. An extreme version
of this argument, originally advanced by an early champion of racial exclusivity Franciszek
Duchiński in the mid-nineteenth century, has been recently reanimated in the Ukrainian political
discourse (Molchanov, 2002: 169, 222-227). Duchiński went to great lengths to underscore the
“Asianness” of the Russians, which in the Eurocentric universe of the time was tantamount to
barbarism and accounted, in his view, for both the despotic and subservient propensities of the
Russian psyche. This was contrasted with a glorified Europeanness and, hence, intrinsic
culturedness of the Ukrainians. To sever the Ukrainians from the Russians, Duchiński invented a
quasi-historical explanation of ethnic differences between the two nationalities, imagining their
descent from mythologically racialized prehistoric peoples: the “Aryans” in the case of Ukraine
and the “Turanians” in the case of Russia:
The Muscovites are neither Slavs nor Christians in the spirit of the [true] Slavs
and other Indo-European Christians. They are nomads until this day, and will
remain nomads forever (cit. in Rudnytsky, 1987: 189).
The myth of the non-Slavic origin of Russians was enthusiastically embraced by the Ukrainian
radical nationalists and has had a certain impact on Western academia (cf. Paszkiewicz, 1983). It
8
denies Russians not only the state and dynastic links to the Kievan Rus, but even a degree of
ethnic kinship to the “true” Eastern Slavs, presenting Russian origins as a result of interbreeding
between Mongol invaders and “Finno-Ugric” tribes of the Volga basin. An underlying, though
rarely stated, premise of this argument is racist: the truly “Aryan” Ukrainians are not only
sharply differentiated from but are presumed to be genetically and culturally superior to the
“Eurasian” Russians.
Fully in line with pseudohistorical musings a-la Duchiński, Ukrainian writers today deny the
Russians their Slavic origins, arguing that “in truth, they are the people that descended from the
Finno-Ugric tribes” (Ukrinform.ua, 2014). Respected Ukrainian scholars, though not going that
far, concur in arguing for Ukrainian primordial uniqueness and early separation from other
Eastern Slavs. Academician Yaroslav Isaievych (1996) advanced the idea that ethnic differences
between future Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians can be traced back to the times of
Scythians and Sarmatians. A standard university textbook asserts that “the origins of the
Ukrainian culture are lost in the hoary antiquity,” that “Ukraine is the ancestral home of the
Indo-European peoples” and that “the main population of Ukraine has not changed since the
stone age” (Ryabchenko et al., 2014: 13, 33, 48). Charlatan musings masquerading as
scholarship get popularized in news media and repeated across the curriculum. A current high
school textbook maintains that “in the 5th millennium BCE ancient Ukrainians invented the
wheel and the plough…domesticated the horse” (Serediuk, 2007; Krivich and Surgai, 2009: 81).
Meanwhile, Russia is seen as an anti-civilization, an antipode of all things progressive and
cultural, “the Moscow ulus based on the traditions of the Golden Horde.” This ostensibly “Asian
(Russian, Russian Orthodox) civilization,” in the opinion of modern Ukrainian admirers of the
controversial nationalist-cum-racist comparisons, “has no future” (Hryniv, 2014) precisely
because of its closeness to Asia and its allegedly Asian origins and features.
The uncritical admiration of Europe and the much more sinister, racialized criticism of Russia
and, by extension, Asia as Russia’s “proper” place of belonging have gained strength since the
start of the “anti-terrorist operation” against the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass. Being in a
de-facto state of war with the Donbass rebels, Ukrainian media has sought to outdo its western
models in vilifying Russia and the Russians. Portraying Russia as “an evil empire” (Portnikov
2014a) and “a sponsor of terrorism” (FoxNews.com, January 31, 2015) became commonplace in
both Ukraine and the West. When the Europe – Asia opposition gets invoked, a new variation of
the same denigrating treatment is acknowledging Russia’s place in Europe with a clever caveat:
Russia, to a Ukrainian nationalist eye, appears as a “Europe perverted, like Conchita Wurst, more
or less” (Yermolenko, 2014).
Clearly, such depiction serves to construct an image of a national enemy and poisons public
opinion in Ukraine. As for the Russian side, reactions to the offensive representations coming
from Ukraine manifest themselves in the wide-ranging nationalist mobilization, as well as the
retrenchment of the uncompromising style of foreign policy and the besieged fortress mentality
that keeps Putin’s regime going. Vilification of the opponent does not help to solve either
international or inter-ethnic conflicts, just the opposite.
One might argue that Russia’s breach of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which
the annexation of the Crimea represents, must justify the hostile rhetoric on Kiev’s part. Equally,
9
Moscow’s clandestine support of the separatist movement in Donbass cannot but trigger
Ukraine’s worst suspicions of the Russian desire to dismantle Ukraine by force. It appears
natural, in such a situation, that Russia’s image should get some beating in the Ukrainian press
and social media.
History and politics
However, the problem lies in the fact that vilification of Russia and the Russians did not appear
out of the blue as a spontaneous reaction to the events in Crimea and the Donbas. The hostile
attitude to Ukraine’s most ethnically and culturally kindred nation has grown in the course of the
last two centuries since the start of nationalist mobilization in what was then called Little Russia
(Malorossiia). This south-western periphery of the Russian empire was one of its most
vulnerable parts, the land traditionally most exposed to anti-Russian influences of western
powers. Consequently, Ukrainian nationalism grew in part under the impact of such influences,
while also reflecting alienation of the Ukrainian pen elite from institutions of the Russian state.
A Ukrainian ethnicity distinct from such kindred Eastern Slavic peoples as Russians and
Belarusians emerged under the conditions of foreign domination of the erstwhile Kievan Rus.
The eastern Rus’ians – future Russians – managed to establish a new state of their own earlier
than the western Rus’ians – future Ukrainians. First in Great Novgorod, Tver, and later, in the
Great Princedom of Muscovy the tradition of the Kievan statehood was resurrected and carried
forward. Ukraine stayed under foreign domination until the Liberation War of 1648-1654 and the
conclusion of the Pereyaslav Agreement with the Russian tsar Alexis. The essence of the
agreement, which brought Ukraine’s Cossacks and the lands they controlled under the protection
of the Russian tsar, is still subject to a debate. While Russians perceived it as an act of
reunification, Ukrainian sovereigntists saw Pereyaslav as the beginning of Russia’s overlordship,
which trampled underfoot the early sprouts of independent indigenous governance.
The perceptions of Russia’s “betrayal” of Ukraine’s aspirations led to the development of what
John Morrison (1993: 679-680) describes as a “permanent inferiority complex and a lack of
confidence in negotiating with Moscow” on the part of the Ukrainian political class. This results
in a perception “that any deal with Russia is a potential trap, however favorable to Ukraine it
terms might appear.” Hence, Russia’s attempts to bring Ukraine into the Customs Union were
met with distrust: if, back in 2013, Moscow was willing to cough up $15 billion in loans and lock
in its gas prices at a level 30 percent below the European average, there must have been a catch
of some sort. The Maidan activists saw the offer, followed by the announcement of a one-year
delay in Kiev’s negotiations with the EU, as subversive of Ukraine’s sovereignty and freedom of
international association. A similar, if not a poorer, arrangement with the western creditors to
ease repayments on Ukraine $18 billion debt, reached in August 2015, was greeted with nearuniversal enthusiasm: Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk described the agreement as a blow to
"enemy" Russia (BBC News, 27 August 2015, Ukraine crisis: Creditors to 'write off' 20% of
debt, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34072823
Had a similar offer come from any other country, it would, in all probability, be accepted with
great enthusiasm. However, Russia’s case is different. First of all, the Russian Empire and its
10
successor state, the USSR, had been the two states most actively involved in shaping the
Ukrainian national identity over the last 350 years. Second, the Russian imperial government had
restricted the use of the Ukrainian language in printed media, on stage and in education on more
than few occasions. Third, the Soviet regime was responsible for the worst tragedy in modern
Ukraine’s history – the great famine of 1933 (“Holodomor”). Against such a background,
Ukrainian nationalists learned to perceive Russia as Ukraine’s existential enemy, a nation as
close to being the perennially hostile Other as could be reasonably imagined. In demonizing
Russia, they were much helped by a long shadow of history.
Although the lands of the future Ukraine were at various times dominated by near a dozen
foreign states – Mongols, Lithuanians, Poles, and, in some parts, Austrians, Hungarians,
Romanians, Crimean Tatars and Turks – it was Russia that became construed as the principal
enemy of Ukrainian freedom in the eyes of Ukraine’s nationalist intellectuals. The paradox of the
situation lies in the fact that, for the Russians themselves, Ukrainians have never been perceived
as foreigners, but rather, as a branch of the greater Russian tree, a marginally different part of the
same “all-Russian” ethnos. The protectorate that Alexis extended to the Ukrainian Cossacks in
1654 and the subsequent annexation of a nucleus would-be Ukraine by Catherine the Great were,
to the Russian mind, as distant from the occupation of a foreign land as legal claiming of one’s
own inheritance could be from a highway robbery.
Russia’s “otherness” for Ukraine can be explained precisely by the degree of ethnic closeness
and the soundness of the Muscovites” claim on the Kievan princes” patrimony. At the start of the
Ukrainian nationalist mobilization its standard-bearers encountered a rather difficult dilemma of
a disinterested “Little Russian” population that seemed content with its “ruski” identity – and the
de-facto subaltern status of the Ukrainian pen elite. After Ivan Kotliarevskyi’s Aeneid (1798),
there was no denial that the separate, even if closely related to the dominant language of the
Russian empire, Ukrainian vernacular actually existed. Hence, a separate Ukrainian identity, still
called the Russian (“ruski”) in Galicia and other eastern regions of the Habsburg empire, had
entered the stage circa 1830s, and with it, a question: what to do with this separateness, once
discovered? The answer was easy in Ukraine’s western lands, dominated by the non-Slavic
ethnicities and the traditionally Ukrainophobic Polish szlachta. Ukrainians had to fight for their
cultural and national self-determination. But what about the country’s core, now safely within
the dominion of Ukraine’s ethnic and religious brethren – the Russians?
Having Ukrainian identity evolve so close to the Russian one and within the envelope of Russian
state institutions presented Ukrainian elites with a choice between assimilation and revolt.
Assimilation into the “Little Russian” and, eventually, “Great Russian” identity was not without
its rewards and became a path that Ukrainian aristocrats, clergymen and pen elites treaded for
centuries. No less figures than Nikolai Gogol, the writer, and Hryhorii Skovoroda, an eighteenthcentury wandering philosopher, a “Russian Socrates,” spring to mind.
The revolt started with Taras Shevchenko and continued with a host of intellectuals full of
existential fear and loathing of moskali (a pejorative for Russians), who were blamed for all real
and alleged misfortunes of the Ukrainian people. However, this anti-Russian nationalism faced
two problems that had to be explained away: one of successful cooptation of the Ukrainian elites
into the institutions of the Russian state and another, of intense cross-fertilization and fusion of
11
the two cultures. While the first could be presented as manifestation of a devious assimilationist
plan, the second has been decried as a result of the colonial Russian influences on the Ukrainian
mind. In both cases, “alien” influences had to be rejected and reversed to avail “purification” of
the national spirit a must-do prerequisite for a political autonomy.
In the end, Ukraine’s nationalists fought off, and defeated, more Russophile members of the
movement, who, like Mykhailo Drahomanov, rejected the idea of political separation from
Russia as preposterous. Not only in the east, but also in the west of Ukraine Russophilia had
originally predominated. Many Galician intellectuals of the mid-nineteenth century kept craving
unity, rather than separateness from Russia, pledging, in Markian Shashkevych (n.d.) words,
eternal bonds to their “Russian hearts and the Russian faith.” In contrast, the more radical
members of the Ukrainian nationalist circles hated the Russian absolutist monarchy and extended
that hate beyond the state institutions and onto the very fabric of the Russian society. They chose
to advance the negative identity of Ukraine as a “non-Russia” par excellence. That choice
determined the history of the Ukrainian-Russian relations for the next two centuries. It might not
be an exaggeration to say that the Maidan events, the rise of the Anti-Maidan movement in
Donbass and Ukraine’s current conflict with the pro-Russian separatists should all be seen as
distant echoes of that fateful decision to ostracize Russians as a hostile “out-group” in opposition
to which the forefathers of the Ukrainian nationalism wanted to constitute their nation.
Debasing the opponent, prolonging the war
After the start of an “anti-terrorist operation” against the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass by
Kiev, the “othering” of Russia has acquired hysterical overtones. Russophobic and not
infrequently racist pronouncements typically characterize in-house speeches and propaganda of
the right-wing nationalist groups, such as the proto-fascist Svoboda party, the former strike force
of the Maidan – the Right Sector, the Patriot of Ukraine, the Ukrainian National AssemblyUkrainian National Self Defense (UNA-UNSO), the Stepan Bandera “Trident” (“Tryzub”) and
others. Leader of Ukraine’s Radical Party and the second runner-up in the 2014 presidential
elections Oleh Lyashko demanded that the “Moscow invaders and their accomplices” be
executed by hanging (Baltija.eu, 2014; Lozovy, 2014). The website of the “Tryzub” carries an
appeal to “dam the Kryvyi Rih quarries with corpses of the moskali” (Banderivec n.d.), while
UNA-UNSO promises to dump Russian corpses into the Kerch Strait until such time when they
form a bridge to “reunite Kuban with Ukraine” (UNA-UNSO n.d.).
All attempts to check the war-mongering of the ruling coalition in the parliament by calling it to
task for the failed promises to restore peace in Eastern Ukraine have been either cut off by the
speaker or silenced by the nationalists. In May 2014, radical nationalist MP Oleg Lyashko
demanded that the whole communist faction in Verkhovna Rada would be thrown out of the
session hall. The majority supported the unprecedented demand, effectively preventing the
opposition from voicing any criticism of the government. In July 2014, parliamentarian Nikolai
Levchenko of the Party of the Regions voiced concerns over the continued use of the army in
attacks on the civilian population in Donbass. Speaker Turchynov accused Mr. Levchenko of
being Putin’s agent in Ukraine and punished him by denying access to the legislative chamber
for 3 days. In September 2014, another attempt by the Party of the Regions’ MP Elena
Bondarenko to call for the cessation of hostilities in Donbass was cut off half-way through the
12
sentence by the speaker. Bondarenko’s microphone was turned off, and she was harshly
admonished by Mr. Turchynov before being sent back to her seat.
Thus, the rhetorical construction of the enemy in Ukraine does not stop on Russia and the
Donbass separatists, but spreads further to delegitimize opposition in the parliament. The
lawmakers from Donbass in particular have been branded as “Putin’s fifth column,” “Russian
propagandists” and “provocateurs” (LIGABiznesInform, 2014). In July 2014 the majority in the
Rada changed the rules of procedure with a deliberate aim to disband the communist faction in
the parliament. Parallel to that, Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice started litigation to outlaw the party
itself. In April 2015, the Head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) Valentyn Nalyvaichenko
promised a crackdown on the May Day demonstration in Kiev and on-the-spot arrests of
demonstrators whom SBU may suspect of being “complicit in terrorist and separatist activities”
and unspecified “crimes against humanity.” The left opposition to the regime and indeed all
peaceniks who might be opposed to the government’s war on its own citizens are now called “the
Kremlin collaborationists” of (RIA Novosti, 2015).
Meanwhile, the right-wing, protofascist, crypto-fascist and openly fascist groups assume the
mantle of patriotism and enjoy unabashed support of Ukraine’s government. The far right
volunteer militias, e.g. the Azov battalion, whose members brandish the Nazi and SS insignia,
have been at the forefront of Ukraine’s war with the Donbass separatists. The war, which they
presumably fight to bring Ukraine closer to Europe, for many of them, including the Azov
commander, the Verkhovna Rada’s parliamentarian Andriy Biletskiy, is nothing else than
implementation of the “Ukrainian racial social-nationalism” and its demand of “the racial
cleansing of the nation” (Biletskiy n.d.).
The far right nationalists are of an opinion that Ukrainians constitute “one of the biggest and one
of the very best kind” parts of the “European White Race – the Creator of a great civilization and
the highest human achievements.” According to them, the “historical mission” of the Ukrainian
nation is “to lead the White Peoples of the world in a final crusade for their survival – a crusade
against the Semite-led subhumanity” (Biletskiy, n.d.). As the internet commentaries and social
media exchanges attest, thousands of Ukraine’s “true patriots” do not stop at labelling anyone
suspect of the pro-Russian sympathies as less than fully civilized, less than fully “normal,” or
even less than fully “human” opponents. Official rebranding of the Azov militia into the special
regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine and the award of the Lieutenant Colonel rank to Mr.
Biletskiy both prove that the government will not shy away even from such allies, no matter how
repulsive the values and goals they assert might be.
The officially tolerated, if not openly encouraged, debasement of Russia and defenders of the
Russian cultural rights in Ukraine produces surprising echoes of Biletskiy’s pronouncements in
the speeches of Ukraine’s statesmen. For example, the June 2014 speech by Prime Minister
Yatsenyuk referred to the Donbass separatists as “subhumans” and “filth” (Uriadovyi portal,
2014), later replaced with “inhumans” and “evil” in the official English translation (Embassy of
Ukraine in the United States of America, 2014). Presidential candidate Poroshenko had vilified
the anti-government protesters in Donbass as “terrorists, criminals and non-humans” that ought
to be “destroyed” as early as April 2014, and repeatedly designated armed opposition to his
regime as “non-humans” (Lb.ua, 2014; President of Ukraine, 2014a-b). A senior adviser to the
13
Minister of the Interior indicated that his department was preparing suggestions on limiting
democratic rights and freedoms of Ukraine’s Russian activists: “if a citizen wants to live in
Russia, be my guest: Suitcase station Russia!” (Interfax-Ukraine, 2014).
Vilification of a movement for cultural autonomy in Donbass before the very first shot in the
conflict was fired helped transform what started like civil disobedience into a full-blown
separatist guerrilla. Systematic abasement of the Donbass defenders in the Ukrainian press as
“subhumans,” “bastards,” “imbeciles,” “potato beetles,” “cockroaches” and the like cannot but
foment their desire to continue resistance. Parallel to that, stigmatization of Russia as a “country
that supports and finances terrorism” (Shulha, 2014), calling the Russian President a “d---head”
in front of the TV cameras (Culzac, 2014), and approvingly citing Dr. Goebbels’s opinion of the
Russian nation as “not a people, but a rabble” (Gazeta.ua, 2014) are all used to justify Kiev’s
actions in the civil war in the East and to encourage its further escalation.
Rhetorical construction of an enemy serves as an instrument of war-mongering and a
mobilization tool. It boosts patriotic credentials of the elected politicians, entrenches new, postMaidan elites, propels journalistic, academic and artistic careers, and helps transform yesterday’s
thugs into tomorrow’s statesmen. Unfortunately for the majority of the population, it also
prolongs the war and suffering. The ethno-nationalist mobilization, achieved through
stigmatization and ostracization of the ethnic outgroup members, builds politicians’ power bases
and generates resources for political action in the situation where other resources are ineffective
or inadequate. Additionally, it helps disguise Ukrainian oligarchs’ never-ending squabbles for
money, power, status, and property by representing them, deceptively, as struggles for national
identity, sovereignty and, as of recent, “dignity” (Molchanov, 2000).
Some of the most authoritative for today’s nationalists champions of the Ukrainian cause are
found among the Nazi collaborators that fought the Soviet Union in World War II. These “longdead Ukrainian fascists” (Snyder, 2010) still serve as role models for the most uncompromising
fighters with the Russophone separatists in Donbass. Fully in line with racialized views of their
interwar predecessors, Ukraine’s radical nationalists are, once again, seeing their main enemy as
the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” (Padden, 2014). Meanwhile, direct descendants of the interwar
Ukrainian fascist organizations, after spending half a century in exile in various countries of the
West, moved back to Ukraine in the 1990s and have been engaged in Russophobic propaganda
ever since.
These groups and their home-grown emulators have succeeded in defining model ethnicization
of the state as the primary means to secure national independence. They insist that the very
concept of the national statehood should be expressed through unconditional privileging of the
titular ethnicity and its corporate rights, rather than common legal rights of all citizens.
Assimilation of minorities is encouraged as a necessary sacrifice serving common good. “Only
the Ukrainian language can serve as a means of identification for the nation,” goes a typical
“Euromaidan” supporter (Hunko 2015), apparently oblivious to the fact that ethnic Russians
constitute more than 17 percent of Ukraine’s population, while Russian language as the language
of day-to-day communication is being preferred by 51 percent of the population (FOM, 2009).
At the same time, Crimea and Donbass, where Russophone population predominates, are seen, in
ex-president Yushchenko’s characterization, as regions “where there is the least of any thing
14
Ukrainian, where there is practically naught of our language, naught of our memory, naught of
our church and naught of our culture. . . where everything is as alien as it may be” and yet, of
which “not a single sliver of land” may ever be surrendered (Ukrainska pravda, 2014).
Conclusion
The seeming intractability of the conflict in East Ukraine can be explained by more than one
factor. The explanation prevailing in the West is that of a “bad” Russia pressuring Ukraine to
abandon its European dream and consistently undermining the very sovereignty of the Ukrainian
state. The “bad Putin” theme is a variation on the topic. More perceptive analysts remind the
readers of the NATO expansion to the East and argue that the West provoked Moscow into
action (Mearsheimer, 2014). “Nationalizing policies” in Ukraine and the plight of the Russianspeaking minorities have also been mentioned on more than one occasion (e.g. Molchanov,
2014; Petro, 2014). Regional alienation and exclusion of Donbass and Crimea from the political
process in the centre played a large part, too. Had it not been for the Maidan activists twice – in
2004 and 2014 – overturning the results of what people in Donbass saw as a legitimate
presidential election, the rebellion perhaps would not have started. Had it not been for the
killings of the pro-Russian demonstrators in Odessa on May 2, 2014, and the shelling and
bombing of the Donbass cities during the “anti-terrorist operation” by the Ukrainian army, the
protest would not, perhaps, have morphed into a civil war.
This war is based on the discursive construction of an enemy and is much helped by
demonization of the opponent, which goes on all sides of the conflict, inside and outside
Ukraine. Moreover, ethnicization of the essentially political and economic differences between
Ukraine’s regions makes compromise more difficult to reach. The invocation by the Ukrainian
politicians and diplomats of the identity markers of a savage, beastly outgroup, a “scum”
(Portnikov 2014b), “subhumans,” “bastards,” when referring to the separatists, cannot but
confirm the worst worries of those who might still be leaning to the idea of devolution and power
sharing. The threats of legal punishment and status marginalization propel continued resistance.
As the late Samuel Huntington argued, identity is a given that cannot be changed. An attempt to
build a new Ukrainian nation by vilifying and humiliating its Russophone constituents is doomed
to fail. Equally, political mobilization against the “Russian aggression” can be, at best, a
temporary solution to the problem of the country’s unity. Russia may eventually close its borders
with Ukraine, just as Kiev desires, and stop supporting the self-proclaimed “Novorossiya”
republics. Kiev may eventually succeed in bringing the embattled region to heel. But will it
succeed in reintegrating Donbass after the devastation caused by the war? Will Donbassites
agree to be the second-class citizens in the ethno-nationally streamlined, Russophobic society?
Such a scenario seems hardly possible at the moment. Perhaps, the war against Donbass
separatists consolidated Ukraine’s political nation; yet it has also demonstrated that the proRussian activists do not fit in there. It is still possible that meaningful devolution will help to heal
Ukraine’s ethno-regional wounds. However, to assure such an outcome, the West and the prowestern government in Ukraine both need to stop molding an enemy figure out of Russia and
Ukraine’s own Russian citizens. Claiming that Ukraine’s Russianness is “alien” to the land is
counterproductive and goes against the national interest of the country.
15
References
Baltija.eu. 2014. Deputat VRU prizval veshat’ “moskovskikh okkupantov” i ikh posobnikov [A
deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine called to hang “Moscow invaders” and their
accomplices]. Baltija.eu, August 3, http://baltija.eu/news/read/39454
Baker, P. 2014. Pressure rising as Obama works to rein in Russia. The New York Times, March 2,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/world/europe/pressure-rising-as-obama-works-torein-in-russia.html?_r=2
Banderivec. [n.d.] Sluzhbe bezopasnosti Ukraїny adresuetsia [To the State Security Service of
Ukraine], http://banderivec.org.ua/index.php?page=pages/zmista/zmista309
Bershidsky, L. 2014. Putin’s Russia, Tolkien’s Mordor: What’s the difference? BloombergView,
December 11, http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-11/putins-russiatolkiens-mordor-whats-the-difference
Biletskiy, A. [n.d.]. Ukraїns’kyi rasovyi sotsial-natsionalizm – ideologiia Organizatsiї “Patriot
Ukraїny” [The Ukrainian racial social-nationalism – An ideology of the Organization
“The Patriot of Ukraine”]. Slovo Oriїv, 35, http://www.slovoor.info/SO35/St35Vid.htm
Culzac, N. 2014. Putin is a d**khead” says Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Deshchytsia. The
Independent, June 16, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukrainianforeign-minister-calls-putin-a-dhead-at-public-protest-9540454.html
Embassy of Ukraine in the United States of America. 2014. Ukraine’s Prime Minister
Yatsenyuk: We will commemorate the heroes by cleaning our land from the evil. June 15,
http://usa.mfa.gov.ua/en/press-center/news/24185-mi-uvichnimo-pamjaty-gerojivochistivshi-nashu-zemlyu-vid-nechistiarsenij-jacenyuk-u-spivchutti-ridnim-i-blizykimzagiblih-vojiniv-u-lugansyku [cf. a screenshot of the original version at
http://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/they-lost-thei/ ]
Ernst, D. 2014. Merkel on Putin: He acts the way he does to “prove he’s a man.” The
Washington Times, December 9,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/9/angela-merkel-vladimir-putin-heacts-way-he-does-p/
FOM [The Public Opinion Foundation]. 2009. Mneniia i vzgliady naseleniia Ukrainy fevrale
2009 goda [Opinions and views of the population of Ukraine in February 2009], February
25, http://bd.fom.ru/report/map/ukrain/ukrain_eo/du090225
16
Gazeta.ua. 2014. “Rosiiany – tse ne narod, a nabrid” – Top-10 tsytat Gebbelsa [“Russians are not
a people but a rabble” – Goebbels’s top-10 quotes]. July 16,
http://gazeta.ua/articles/history/_rosiyani-ce-ne-narod-a-nabrid-top10-citatgebbelsa/570126
Golovakha, Ie. 2014. Ievhen Golovakha: Krym – tse nasha nepomirna tsina…[ Ievhen
Golovakha: Crimea is our immeasurable price…] An interview by O. Yakhno. Den”,
March 27, http://m.day.kiev.ua/uk/article/podrobici/ievgen-golovaha-krim-ce-nashanepomirna-cina
Hryniv, O. 2014. Vtorhnennia varvariv: Moskovs’kyi ulus proty zakhidnoї tzyvilizatsiї [An
invasion by barbarians: The Moscow ulus against the Western civilization]. Rukh, May 5,
http://www.nru.org.ua/news/aktualno/756-profesor-oleh-hryniv-vtorhnennya-varvarivmoskovskyi-ulus-proty-zakhidnoi-tsyvilizatsii
Hunko, O. 2015. It is time to speak Ukrainian in Ukraine. Euromaidan Press, January 15,
http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/01/15/it-is-time-to-speak-ukrainian-in-ukraine/
Interfax-Ukraine. 2014. MVD vystupaet za ogranichenie prav separatistov izbirat’ i byt’
izbrannymi [The Ministry of the Internal Affairs is for limitation of the separatists” rights
to elect and get elected], July 9, http://interfax.com.ua/news/general/212760.html
Isaievych, Y. 1996. Ukraina davnia i nova: narod, relihiia, kul’tura [Ukraine ancient and
modern: The people, religion, culture]. Lviv: In-t ukrainoznavstva im. I. Kryp’iakevycha.
Johnson, P. 2014. Is Vladimir Putin another Adolf Hitler? Forbes, May 5,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/currentevents/2014/04/16/is-vladimir-putin-another-adolfhitler/
Jones, O. 2014. David Cameron and the cynicism of comparing Putin to Hitler. The Guardian,
September 3, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/03/david-cameroncynicism-comparing-vladimir-putin-adolf-hitler-ukraine
Kelley, M. B. 2014. 12 prominent people who compared Putin to Hitler circa 1938. Business
Insider, May 22, http://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-compared-putin-to-hitler2014-5
Kostyk, V. 2014. “Rosiia – tse kraïna-fantom, kraïna-fake, kraïna-iliuzia” – Filatov [Russia is a
phantom country, fake country, a country-illusion” – Filatov]. Presa Ukraïny, October 1,
http://uapress.info/uk/news/show/41340
Krivich, I., Surgai, L. 2009. Ukraїnska mova. 9 klas: Plany-konspekty urokiv [The Ukrainian
language. 9th grade: Lessons’ summaries]. Kharkiv: Ranok.
Lb.ua. 2014. Terorystiv na Skhodi Ukraïny potribno sudyty abo znyshchuvaty – Poroshenko
[The terrorists in the East of Ukraine must be prosecuted or destroyed – Poroshenko].
17
Lb.ua, April 30,
http://ukr.lb.ua/news/2014/04/30/265016_terroristov_vostoke_ukraini_nuzhno.html
LIGABiznesInform. 2014. Deputaty podralis i vygnali iz zala regionala Levchenko [MPs fought
and kicked the “regionalist” Levchenko out of the chamber]. LIGA.Novosti, July 22,
http://news.liga.net/news/politics/2625407deputaty_podralis_i_vygnali_iz_zala_regionala_levchenko.htm
Lozovy, A. 2014. VK Wall posts, August 2, https://vk.com/wall139835612_57612?reply=57614
Lucas, E. 2009. The new cold war: Putin’s Russia and the threat to the West. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Lutsenko, Yu. 2014. Lutsenko: Rosiia – tse velyka benzokolonka z atomnymy raketamy
[Lutsenko: Russia is a big gas pump with atomic missiles], ICTV, October 20,
http://fakty.ictv.ua/ua/index/view-media/id/71627
Mankoff, J. 2012. Russian foreign policy: The return of great power politics. 2nd ed. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Mearsheimer, J. 2014. Why the Ukraine crisis is the West’s fault: The liberal delusions that
provoked Putin. Foreign Affairs, September/October, 1-12.
Molchanov, M. 2000. Postcommunist nationalism as a power resource. Nationalities Paper, 28
(2), 263-288.
Molchanov, M. 2002. Political culture and national identity in Russian-Ukrainian relations.
College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
Molchanov, M. 2014. What does it take to save Ukraine? openDemocracy, May 27,
https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/mikhail-molchanov/what-does-it-take-to-saveukraine
Morrison, J. 1993. Pereyaslav and after: The Russian-Ukrainian relationship. International
Affairs 69(4), 677703.
Motyl, A. 2014. Putin, just evil enough. CNN Opinion, July 25,
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/25/opinion/motyl-putin-is-evil/
Neumann, I. 1999. Uses of the Other: “The East” in European identity formation. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Padden, B. 2014. Ukraine’s far right candidate reflects mainstream nationalist views. Voice of
America, May 16, http://www.voanews.com/content/ukraines-far-right-candidatereflects-mainstream-nationalist-views/1916403.html
18
Parry, R. 2015. Ukraine - the “new Hitler” and the Putin-did-it conspiracy theory. Stop the War
Coalition, February 17, http://stopwar.org.uk/news/ukraine-and-the-new-hitler-fairy-talewhat-lies-behind-the-putin-did-it-conspiracy-theory
Paszkiewicz, H. 1983. The rise of Moscow’s power. Trans. P.S. Falla. Boulder, CO: East
European Monographs.
Petro, N. 2014. The real war in Ukraine: The battle over Ukrainian identity. The National
Interest, December 4, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-war-ukraine-the-battleover-ukrainian-identity-11782
Portnikov, V. 2014a. Rosiia staie novoiu imperiieiu zla [Russia becomes a new evil empire].
Espresso TV, July 2, http://espreso.tv/blogs/2014/07/02/p
Portnikov, V. 2014b. Putin poslav na smert na Donbas nebezpechnu dlia nioho “navoloch” –
Veselovsky [Putin has sent the “scum” that was dangerous to him to die in Donbass –
Veselovsky]. Radio Svoboda, October 17,
http://www.radiosvoboda.org/articleprintview/26642708.html
Presa Ukraïny. 2014. Novyny z Mordoru [News from Mordor], October 1,
http://uapress.info/uk/news/show/41325
President of Ukraine. 2014a. President’s commentary on liberation of Sloviansk from militants
[In Ukrainian]. Press Service of the President of Ukraine, July 5,
http://www.president.gov.ua/news/30676.html
President of Ukraine. 2014b. 17 hostages were released from militants - Petro Poroshenko [In
Ukrainian]. Press Service of the President of Ukraine, July 29,
http://www.president.gov.ua/news/30878.html
RIA Novosti. 2015. Nalyvaichenko ne iskliuchaet zaderzhanie kommunistov na mitinge 1 maia
[Nalyvaichenko does not exclude that the communist participants of the May Day
demonstration will be detained]. April 1,
http://rian.com.ua/politics/20150401/365643921.html
Ryabchenko, O., Belikov, Yu., Burmaka, V. et al. 2014. Istoriia ukraїns’koї kul’tury [The
history of the Ukrainian culture]. Kharkiv: KhNUMG.
Rudnytsky, Ivan L. 1987. Essays in modern Ukrainian history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Serediuk, O. 2007. Treba buty golovoiu, a ne khvostom [One ought to be a head, not a tail]
Volyns’ka pravda, October 31, http://www.pravda.lutsk.ua/ukr/news/105/
Shashkevych, M. [n.d.] Iz psalmiv Ruslanovykh [From Ruslan’s psalms]. Izbornyk, n.d.,
http://litopys.org.ua/zahpysm/zah04.htm
19
Shchetkina, E. 2014. Rosiia – tse kraïna bozhevil’nykh? [Russia – a country of the insane?]
dsnews.ua, October 8, http://www.dsnews.ua/society/chomu-rosiya---tse-krayinabozhevilnih-08102014182100
Shulha, Ye. 2014. Rechi svoїmi imenamy. [Call things with their own names]. Ukraïna Moloda,
September 30, http://www.umoloda.kiev.ua/number/2535/283/89624/
Snyder, T. 2010. A fascist hero in democratic Kiev. The New York Review of Books, 24
February, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/feb/24/a-fascist-hero-indemocratic-kiev/
Sonne, P. 2015. Vladimir Putin likely to deliver speech at U.N. The Wall Street Journal, March
31, http://www.wsj.com/articles/vladimir-putin-likely-to-deliver-speech-at-u-n1427808297
Traynor, I., and MacAskill, E. 2014. David Cameron warns of “appeasing Putin as we did
Hitler”. The Guardian, September 2,
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/02/david-cameron-warns-appeasing-putinukraine-hitler
Tsygankov, A. 2009. Russophobia: Anti-Russian lobby and American foreign policy. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
The Insider. 2014. Arsen Avakov: U premiera dolzhny byt’ MVD, Minyust i Minfin. Eto
minimum [Arsen Avakov: The Premier must have the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of
Justice and Ministry of Finance. This is a minimum]. November 17,
http://www.theinsider.ua/politics/5468dc0a6d2cd/
TV Zvezda. 2015. Yatsenyuk ob’iavil voinu Rossii [Yatsenyuk declared a war on
Russia], March 13,
http://tvzvezda.ru/news/vstrane_i_mire/content/201503131019-ojmm.htm
Ukrainian Canadian Congress. n.d. Community profile, http://www.ucc.ca/ukrainians-incanada/community-profile/
Ukrainska Pravda. 2014. Yushchenko pro Krym i Donbas: tam chuzhyna chuzhynoiu.
[Yushchenko on Crimea and Donbass: as alien as it may be]. December 26,
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/12/26/7053324/
Ukrinform.ua. 2014. Oleksandr Paliy: Ukraïna zavzhdy bula i bude na svoïkh zemlyakh
[Oleksandr Paliy: Ukraine has always been and will always be on its lands]. Ukrinform,
May 7,
http://www.ukrinform.ua/ukr/news/oleksandr_paliy_ukraiina_zavgdi_bula_i_bude_na_sv
oiih_zemlyah_1936240
20
UNA-UNSO. [n.d.] Zaiava UNA-UNSO z pryvodu podii bilia ostroba Tuzla [The UNA-UNSO
statement regarding events around Tuzla Island]. http://una-unso.info/article/artid-2/langukr/index.html
Uriadovyi portal. 2014. Arseniy Yatsenyuk vyslovyv spivchuttia ridnym i blyz’kym zagyblykh u
Luhans’ku voїniv [Arseniy Yatsenyuk expressed condolences to the families and friends
of the military men killed near Luhansk]. Uriadovyi portal, June 14,
http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/uk/publish/article?art_id=247389338&cat_id=24427642
9
Vidomosti. 2014. Vnaslidok vtorhnennia v Ukraïnu zahynuly shchonaimenshe 2 tysiachi
rosiis’kykh viis’kovykh [At least 2 thousand Russian servicemen died as a result of their
invasion of Ukraine]. Vidomosti-UA.com, September 2, http://vidomostiua.com/news/94285
WHO (World Health Organization). 2011. Mental Health Atlas 2011.
http://www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/atlas/profiles/en/#S
Yermolenko, V. 2014. Rosiia – tse chasto Yevropa navyvorit. Yak Konchita Vurst, pryblyzno
[Russia is oftentimes Europe perverted, like Conchita Wurst, more or less]. UAINFO,
May 19, http://uainfo.org/blognews/324168-rosya-ce-chasto-yevropa-navivort.-yakkonchta-vurst-priblizno.html
21