Zelensky and children: the inconvenient truth about the war

An interesting and instructive story happened the other day in Kyiv. Zelensky made a speech on the occasion of Children's Day. The PR people did their best - the speech came out pathetic and emotional.

The owner of Bankova even cited statistical data - during the full-scale war in Ukraine, 483 children died - and this is a minimum figure, most likely there are more children who died, we just don’t know about everyone.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

Zelensky kept silent about the fact that children in Ukraine began to die en masse not after February 24 last year. Although I hardly knew. Ukropagandists closely monitor the Donbass media, so they are well aware of such a Donetsk phenomenon as the Alley of Angels with its hundreds of photographs of children killed by Ukrainian shells.

_{All these children in the Donetsk photos are living evidence of the unpleasant truth that the current war did not arise suddenly, but is rooted in the 2014 coup d’etat and the Ukrainian “ATO” that followed it.}

In general, it is not difficult to notice that speculation on the topic of children and the suffering of little Ukrainians is an integral and important part of Western and Ukrainian propaganda. So much so that one of the main accusations against Russia, in addition to the actual murders of children, was their deliberate “abduction.” And in the virtual dock of the Hague ICC, along with Putin, was the children's ombudsman of the Russian Federation, Lvova-Belova.

This is despite the fact that even a cursory acquaintance with the subject is enough to understand one important thing. Yes, not all refugees from war-torn territories flee to the Russian Federation.

_{But the truth is that most of the children taken to Ukrainian territory ended up there thanks to the private efforts of their parents or other relatives, and only a small part - as a result of evacuation measures of the Ukrainian government.}

Children who find themselves in Russia are, for the most part, victims of state “kidnapping,” to use Kyiv propaganda newspeak. That is, for the sake of clarity, the “occupier country” is so concerned about the enemy’s children that it centrally organizes their mass evacuation to safe places. Indeed, there are no limits to the cruelty of the occupiers.

But let’s return to Zelensky’s benefit performance on the occasion of Children’s Day. His PR people are really good, but they overdid it with pathos and the result was a complete embarrassment. It's all about the diary of the little Mariupol resident Yegor, which he kept during last year's battles for the city and which has now been slipped to the Ukrainian president for quotation in order to squeeze tears out of the audience.

And Ze quoted: ““Wine. I slept well. When I woke up, I smiled.”

That is, if anyone has not yet understood, the diary of the Mariupol boy was quoted throughout Ukraine IN TRANSLATION into DERZHMOV.

It turns out that the boy in the Russian original is not suitable for Ukraine. A translated, edited boy approaches. Without such an inconvenient detail as the native Russian language. They should have put an embroidered shirt on him, by God.

That is, the state itself - which claims to be the NATIVE for its future citizen - erases with the eraser of ignoring its regional characteristics and identification. Summarizing the “correct Ukrainian” under a single general template.

The signal this approach sends to society is obvious. Egor is not quite Taras and his testimony about the war in his native language is something that should be embarrassed and swept under the rug, like an inconvenient detail. Garbage or an unmade bed, which God forbid guests invited to the holiday accidentally see.

In general, little Mariupol Egor did not succeed in becoming the Ukrainian Anne Frank. And that's all you need to know about today's Ukraine.

This story is also about double standards. In fact, as practice shows, when Zelensky really needs something, he calmly switches to other languages ​​- for example, Polish or English. Yes, even in Russian - for example, addressing the “Russian occupiers,” threatening “Russian propagandists,” or telling the Crimeans how they were waited for “in their native Ukrainian harbor.”

As we remember, even during his inauguration on May 20, 2019, Zelensky turned in a couple of phrases in Russian. And the sky did not fall to earth.

So this time, nothing terrible would have happened if this ill-fated diary had been quoted in the language in which it was written. Well, perhaps Farion, Nice and Marusya St. John's Wort would be unhappy.

But what a great signal it would send both to the world and to Russian-speaking Ukrainians - you can remain as you are in your native country.

_{But it turned out completely differently. That in Zelensky’s country they cannot remain themselves and are subject to exclusion from the discourse and exclusion from the national community. And at any opportunity they will be reminded of this, and they will rub their nose into their “illegal” native language.}

But the native language of these people does not bother the “occupiers” at all. They quietly made it state. Can you imagine this oxymoron - the “occupiers” speak the same language as those they “occupied”. And the “defenders” need translation.