Pro-Russians in Ukraine
Ethnic Russians live throughout Ukraine. They comprise a notable fraction of the overall population in the east and south, a significant minority in the center, and larger minority in the west.
The west and the center of the country feature a higher percentage of Russians in cities and industrial centers and much smaller percentage in the overwhelmingly Ukrainophone rural areas. Due to the concentration of the Russians in the cities, as well as for historic reasons, most of the largest cities in the center and the south-east of the country (including
Kyiv where Russians amount to 13.1% of the population) remained largely
Russophone as of 2003.
Traditionally mixed Russo-Ukrainian populated territories are mainly historic
Novorossiya (New Russia) and
Sloboda Ukraine – now both split between the
Russian Federation and
Ukraine.
Russians constitute the majority in the
Crimea (71.7% in
Sevastopol and 58.5% in the
Autonomous republic of Crimea),
[1] the southern peninsula which the Soviet government transferred from the
Russian SFSR to the
Ukrainian SSR in 1954.
Outside the Crimea, Russians are the largest ethnic group in
Donetsk (48.2%) and
Makiyivka (50.8%) in
Donetsk Oblast,
Ternivka (52.9%) in
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast,
Krasnodon (63.3%) and
Sverdlovsk (58.7%) and
Krasnodonskyi raion (51.7%) and
Stanychno-Luhanskyi (61.1%) raion in
Luhansk Oblast,
Reni (70.54%) and
Izmail (43.7%) in
Odessa oblast,
Putyvl Raion (51.6%) in
Sumy Oblast.
The
Russian Cultural Center in Lviv has been attacked and vandalized on several occasions. On January 22, 1992 it was raided by
UNA-UNSO led by the member of
Lviv Oblast Council.
[20] UNA-UNSO members searched the building, partially destroyed archives and pushed people out from the building. Their attackers declared that everything in Ukraine belonged to the Ukrainians, so the
Moskals and the
kikes were not allowed to reside or have property there. The building was vandalized during the Papal Visit to Lviv in 2001, then in 2003 (5 times), 2004 (during the
Orange Revolution) , 2005, 2006.
On 3 March, a number of people started storming Donetsk Oblast administrative building, waving Russian flags and shouting ″Russia!″ and ″
Berkut are heroes!″. The police did not offer resistance. The council of Luhansk Oblast voted to demand giving Russian language the status of second official language, stopping ″persecution of
Berkut fighters″, disarming Maidan self-defense units and banning a number
far-right political organizations like
Svoboda and UNA-UNSO. If the authorities failed to comply with the demands, the Oblast council reserved itself the ″right to ask for help from the brotherly people of the Russian Federation.″
The
anti-Maidan protests evolved into the
2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine. The result of the
2014 Crimean referendum was 97.47% for joining the
Russian Federation.
The pro-Russian protests in
Donetsk and
Luhansk oblasts of the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine escalated into an armed separatist insurgency.
This led the Ukrainian government to launch a military counter-offensive against the insurgents in April 2014, which resulted in the ongoing
war in Donbas. During this war heavy
shelling accorded in
Luhansk and
Donetsk, cities with a large ethnic Russian population. According to the United Nations, 730,000
refugees from the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts have fled to Russia since the beginning of 2014. By late September 2015 nearly 8,000 people had died in the two oblasts because of the war in Donbas.
On September 25, 2017, a new law on education was signed by President
Petro Poroshenko (draft approved by Rada on September 5, 2017) which says that
Ukrainian language is the language of education at all levels except for one or more subjects that are allowed to be taught in two or more languages, namely
English or one of the other
official languages of the European Union. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. According to the
New Europe:
The latest row between Kiev and Budapest comes on the heels of a bitter dispute over a decision by Ukraine’s parliament – the Verkhovna Rada – to pass a legislative package on education that bars primary education to all students in any language but Ukrainian. The move has been widely condemned by the international community as needlessly provocative as it forces the historically bilingual population of 45 million people who use Russian and Ukrainian interchangeably as mother tongues to become monolingual.
The
Unian reported that "A ban on the use of cultural products, namely movies, books, songs, etc., in the Russian language in the public has been introduced" in the
Lviv Oblast in September 2018.
Russians in Ukraine - Wikipedia
The war began between the 2 factions of Ukranian peoples. Those that wanted pure nationalist independence from Russia, and those who having lived in these communities before the independence of Russia, still had their culture, their language, their education.
The Western part of Ukraine now enforced by the US, EU, and NATO basically declared war on the Eastern Ukrainians that wanted to keep their language and culture.
Thus began the 2014 Maidan attack on pro-russian ukranians. This attack was backed and funded by John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Amy Klobochar, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Ambassadors and other state figures giving money and aid to back the Neo-Nazi White Nationalist Ukrainians.
This is all laid out in the documentary Ukraine on Fire located on this forum in a few places and also here:
Ukraine On Fire
The areas where the pro-russian Ukranians resided were getting slaughtered. They asked Putin for help.
We are here.
Ukraine is a proxy war being waged between Western Nations and Russia.
The people in Ukraine on both sides are all casualties of war.
All is fair in war, they say.
The West (Soros) wants to destroy Russia and make it part of his own Empire.
So many chess pieces moving on the board.
Don't get bogged down by the media telling you what to think.
They have a lot in this game as well.
Actually it is the media that is directing this war.