A popular pro-Russian politician in #Poland once again amplifies the popular #Russia narrative about “languages spoken in #Ukraine”, trying to demonstrate that “majority of people speak Russian”.

But apart of using old and manipulated data, he distracts the debate from simple international law facts to vague “common sense” heuristics, where speaking a language automatically means belonging to some culture or country and - above all - gives those countries some moral or political right over other countries. Following this line, one would have to conclude that the US automatically has a right to the UK, Australia or Ireland (and anyone can come up with a dozen of such examples from their region). For starters, the fact that I speak fluent Russian does not imply that I’m culturally Russian or expect “protection” from Russia.

Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion is 100% cultural and civilisation war between two competing models of governance - the archaic feudal-autocratic model of Russia, and the “democracy of peers” model which has been always widespread among Slavs in the form of veche assemblies.

@kravietz
There are two core logical errors with this line of thinking. First of all, Russia is not and never was a Russian nation state — and as such, it cannot act as an envoy of all Russians, "defending" them. It could take this turn during the last decade of Russian Empire, but failed — and Bolsheviks made it turn back to the feudal-autocratic model, effectively restoring the worst of tsarist practices.

@kravietz
And the second one is that it is implied that all Russians should support that feudal-autocratic model, that getting rid of that model means getting rid of all Russians. Being Russian, of course I do not agree with this and I do not support that model precisely because I think that Russians deserve better too — that does not make me an Ukrainian, I'm still Russian, but I'm culturally European.