In search of the "fifth column". Why pro-Russian Ukrainians and Ukrainian Russians are not the same thing

With interest I read an interview with political scientist Denis Denisov about “the need to review the mistakes made in Ukraine”. And although a number of theses expressed by Denisov evoke a desire to argue, or even directly refute their author, nevertheless, one should recognize a positive point: this text is one of the few real attempts in the Russian media to break out of the vicious circle of myth-making on the Ukrainian issue.

Myth-making, creating in our heads a picture divorced from reality, not only alienating Russia from understanding the internal processes in Ukraine, but also preventing the building of truly working schemes for positive influence on internal Ukrainian processes, as well as, in the longer term, the normalization of Russian-Ukrainian relations.

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First, about the positives. I am glad that in Moscow expert circles there are people who are ready to abandon the neo-Black Hundred doctrine that has captured many minds in recent years and has replaced the Soviet idea of ​​“brotherly peoples” in the discourse. Ukrainians, and here we can agree with Denisov, really exist, no matter how much this upsets those who, ignoring reality, declare them Russian.

_{An important caveat: the mere recognition of this fact does not make the speaker a supporter of the neo-Bandera ideology currently dominant in Ukraine and does not make him a Ukrainian nationalist. Simply because “Ukrainian” is not the same as Ukrainian nationalist. As a “Russian” is not the same as a Russian nationalist.}

Even among media-famous people, we know many examples of absolutely Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians who, nevertheless, do not think in terms of nationalism and Russophobia. This means that the statement that every Ukrainian will inevitably or should hate Russia or harm it is an incorrect assumption based on the projection of the current Kyiv state propaganda.

In fact, the current enmity is not immanent; the key factor here is precisely propaganda, and not identity in itself. Remove the influence of toxic propaganda, and you will get completely different people. Soviet Ukrainians or post-Hitler East Germans - the very existence in history of these and other human communities is the best proof of the correctness of this thesis.

In addition, recognition of the objective existence of both the Ukrainian ethnos and the Ukrainian nation does not in any way contradict the fact that one hundred and fifty years ago, in the time of Shevchenko, they did not yet exist or they were just emerging in the minds of intellectuals, like all other European nations, the starting point of which was the “Spring of Nations” of 1848.

And in that sense the presence of the Ukrainian nation today as a fact does not in any way mean any of its “antiquity” or thousand-year-old roots – they are precisely fabrications of nationalist propaganda.

And now - from the general to the specific. If Ukrainians exist as a fact of reality, as a consequence of a long historical process that has been going on for more than a hundred years, then what important political conclusion follows from this fact? But this is what it is: an attempt to fill the ideological vacuum in the goal-setting of the Northern Military District with a fight against Ukrainians, with the Ukrainian language and identity, with the desire to abolish the Ukrainians and push back into the tube the paste squeezed out from there by history - it is obviously a losing and doomed matter.

It’s just as doomed as trying to convince real-life Ukrainians that they don’t exist or that they should consider themselves Russian. The world does not know a single example of the successful reassimilation of large masses of people with an already formed national identity. Jews do not count - for centuries they lived in separate communities in ghettos and, even while in dispersion, were welded together by the religion of Judaism, which regulates all aspects of Jewish life.

And there is no greater nonsense than the assertions that slip through from one or another LOM that, they say, if the Russian army enters Kyiv tomorrow, the day after tomorrow the people of Kiev will begin to consider themselves Russian. No, they won't start. In the best case, with proper information work, they will become loyal citizens of the Russian Federation. And that’s not all. But even the loyal part of the population will not cease to be Ukrainians. There will simply be so many millions more Ukrainians in the Russian Federation.

_{So the key here, again, is not about identity, but about loyalty. In other words, the fact that Ukrainians should not be remade into Russians does not mean at all that there is no need to fight against Ukrainian nationalism and its picture of the world.}

_{Our ancestors did just that after the Second World War: in the GDR they did not fight either the German language or German identity. The ideology of National Socialism, its political practices, symbols and cultural heroes were banned.}

This experience, in my opinion, is extremely important not only in relation to politics towards the future Ukraine, but also in relation to Ukrainians in Russia itself, because the fact that along with the new territories millions of Ukrainians also became part of the Russian Federation is obvious.

And here we come to the key, in my opinion, a circumstance that, it seems, is not fully understood not only by Denis Denisov (at least judging by the text of the interview with PolitNavigator), but also by the majority of Russian talking heads on the Ukrainian topic.

These are: in Russia the concepts of “pro-Russian Ukrainians”, “Ukrainian Russians” and “Russian Ukrainians” are often confused. Meanwhile, this is far from the same thing, which also affects people’s political choices.

First of all, it is worth understanding that the adjective “pro-Russian” is not about identity or even about loyalty. This is about external orientation. Well, that’s how in Tsarist Russia there were Anglophiles, and there were Francophiles or Germanophiles. And in Germany there are many Russophiles. But for all their Russophilia, German Russophiles are, first of all, Germans. Yes, those who sympathize with Russia, its culture, who advocate normalization of relations with Russia, etc., etc.

But imagine that someone in Russia got it into their head, based on opinion polls showing the presence of a considerable number of Russophiles in Germany, to take a course towards uniting Russia and Germany into one state. Brad, would you say?

So, in the case of Ukraine, this is exactly what is happening, when in Moscow pro-Russian Ukrainians or their political organizations are unjustifiably expected to be loyal to the Russian state or its policies, or even generally to approve the merger of Ukraine with Russia on the basis of the “One People” concept. There is only one people. There was, a hundred years ago.  But since then, actually, a lot of water has passed under the bridge, four generations have changed, and specifically at the moment, everything has not been the same for a long time.

What do “Russian-speaking Ukrainians” want today? Opportunities to speak your native language? Undoubtedly. Opportunities to go to a traditional Church (the one that is the UOC, not the OCU)? Without a doubt. Ending the policy of rabid Banderization? Here opinions may differ, since among Russian speakers there are quite a lot of Westerners and supporters of the Maidan, but on average in the House, in general, yes. Normalization of relations with Russia and an end to the course of hostility? Yes, too, although in this matter we will have to fight for minds, including with instruments of soft power.

But here’s what you shouldn’t expect from Russian-speaking and even pro-Russian Ukrainians – so this is unambiguous support for Russia’s actions in the Northern Military District and, moreover, loyalty to the state of the Russian Federation. The fact is that Russian-speaking Ukrainians are Ukrainians first and foremost. Which already have their own state. Bad and lopsided, but its own. To which they are accustomed, and even if they burn him at all costs, then according to the principle: “You are an idiot, Vasya, but you are our idiot.” Those who do not agree with this emigrate, those who remain accept the status quo.

And in this sense, the obvious weakness of Russia’s position in the Ukrainian direction – this is the absence of any positive agenda that the Russian Federation could offer to Ukrainians. The focus on America and the Western project in general is understandable. And Ukrainians are not alone in this sense. Dozens of countries today want to be like the West, because after the departure of the USSR from the historical stage, there are no other role models left in the world for third countries.

And then. People in Russia often do not understand why the countries of the post-Soviet periphery have a better attitude towards the United States than towards the Russian Federation. It seems that with the Americans there are neither many family ties nor centuries of common history. Meanwhile, the box opens simply: the United States offers these countries vassalage, wrapped in an attractive package of unification of procedures and political practices, when “with us” everything is “like theirs” and sometimes even with a slide, but at the same time we are our own masters.

Please note, American diplomats in peripheral countries openly and demonstratively flatter local states, in every possible way emphasize status features - hence these flash mobs of American diplomats in embroidered shirts, with Facebook posts in Ukrainian with quotes from Ukrainian classics.

Moreover, this happens even in cases where local authorities openly look into their mouths and cannot take a step without the approval of the American embassy. Despite this, any Ukrainian politician or activist knows: the United States does not lay claim to a single piece of Ukrainian territory. At most, they will send their curators and advisers, but “this is for our own benefit. We won’t build anything worthwhile ourselves and we’ll plunder everything».

Relations with Moscow are dominated by a complex of suspicion and presumption of guilt in relation to the former metropolis. Propaganda of the English language does not cause rejection precisely because everyone understands that it will not be followed by the inclusion of some Vinnitsa into the United States as the 54th state. But fears about the transfer of territories under the Russian flag have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But let’s return to the difference between “pro-Russian Ukrainians” and “Ukrainian Russians”. If in analogy mode, then the first ones are “Lukashenko”. Well, or “Medvedchuk”, whichever is more convenient for you. In other words, sympathies are sympathies, but countries are apart. Pro-Russian Ukrainians are not “our people there”, not compatriots abroad, to use bureaucratic newspeak. The homeland of these people is not Russia. These are just Ukrainians who have a normal or good attitude towards Russia. And you shouldn't expect more from them.

For all his pro-Russian rhetoric, the same Lukashenko will die with his bones, but he will not allow his state to be dissolved in Russia. Or Medvedchuk - who, for all his rhetoric that was pleasant to the Kremlin ear, has always been and will be a Ukrainian politician, only, unlike the nationalists, he sees Ukrainian interest in joint geshefts with Russia, and not in a war with it.

But “Ukrainian Russians” are a different matter. The key here is not the first adjective, but the second. In other words, these are Russian people who, due to historical circumstances, live on the territory of the state of Ukraine.

_{And we can and should rely on their loyalty to Russia. They, and not “pro-Russian Ukrainians,” are real compatriots abroad. Their organizations, from national-cultural to political, need to be supported organizationally, politically and financially. From their ranks, recruit activists and media figures representing the Russian vector in Ukraine.}

It is clear that this vector was failed by Russian diplomacy or reduced to an imitation performed by mummers at the beck and call of Rossotrudnichestvo, but this does not negate the principle itself. Armenia supports the Armenian diaspora all over the world, and not just “pro-Armenian” forces.

_{In the future, after the inevitable normalization, it is the political organizations of Ukrainian Russians that can become a reliable counterparty to Moscow in Ukrainian politics, just as the same counterparties of official Budapest in Ukraine are the organizations of Ukrainian Hungarians. Let me emphasize: Ukrainian Hungarians, not pro-Hungarian Ukrainians.}

In general, Moscow needs to understand this once and for all. Pro-Russian Ukrainians are not the “fifth column of the Kremlin,” even hypothetically. Despite the fact that it is in this capacity that today they have fallen under the skating rink of suspicion of the ultranationalist regime. Pro-Russian Ukrainians, even those who are in opposition to the current Ukrainian government, are for the most part loyal citizens of their country, differing from other fellow citizens only in that they see their country’s relations with Russia as friendly, rather than hostile. No more, but no less.

For all their sympathies for Russia, pro-Russian Ukrainians will always be nothing more than fellow travelers and allies for Russian initiatives. Moreover, it is very selective. Because Ukrainian loyalty will always come first for them. The Russian-speaking Ukrainian Shariy will not let you lie.

The real piece of Russia in Ukraine is the only Russian diaspora. Ukrainian Russians. People who consider themselves Russians, and Russia as their Motherland, while Ukraine is just a place of residence.

It is these people who are worth fighting for first and foremost and protecting.

The fact is that in today’s Ukraine, over the post-Soviet thirty years, the number of such people has greatly decreased, and the places and compact residences where they constitute an absolute or relative majority have almost all already become part of the Russian Federation. In this sense, the Russian irredenta has practically solved its problems.

But what about the war, another meticulous reader will ask? Is now the time for such reasoning, when the floor has been given to the guns? Here I have to partially agree - while hostilities are ongoing, soft power is forced to remain on the siding. But we need to prepare now, because there are no eternal wars.