Ukraine's Donbas Is Like America's Deep South
Citat:
I remember meeting one such supremacist at a conference in Kiev in 1994. He insisted that the rights of Russians were persistently being violated in the Crimea. Were there too many Ukrainian schools?, I asked. No, he answered. Did Ukrainians dominate the media? No. Was he unable to speak Russian in public? No, again. What then was the problem? He finally fessed up: the very fact that Ukrainian existed in the Crimea was an offense. Indeed, I can think of no instance of a Russian speaker being discriminated against in either the Donbas or the Crimea since 1991.
A far more appropriate analogy for understanding Russo-Ukrainian relations is the Jim Crow South, with Russians as the whites and Ukrainians as the blacks. Not only have Russians and Russian speakers ruled the Crimea and the Donbas and enjoyed complete language and cultural rights. They have also proven to be the most reactionary, intolerant and illiberal population within Ukraine.