[khokhol]

The Soviet Union, witch was a country

An empire, not a country.

Which dissolved itself peacefully enough and with no outside prodding of any kind on 26 December 1991. In the process, fully and unequivocally recognizing the complete sovereign independence of all of its constituent members at the time -- along with their inviolable borders -- including Ukraine.

End of story, full stop.

This idea you have that it's basically "still one country, hashing things out" is seriously misinformed nonsense.

Kievan Rus

And the idea that anyone, anywhere should be fighting a full-scale war in 2024 based on (or "explained" by) events of the 9th-13th centuries is, by all objective standards -- batshit crazy.

[greedo]

They're just spouting the various Russian justifications for the invasion. It gets tiresome when they can't even agree that Ukraine is a "real" country and that Russia is completely at fault.

[panick21_]

Don't put words in my mouth. I have been studying Russian history as a hobby for decades. Ukraine is a fully independent country. I am against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And I am pro-supporting Ukraine against Russia. That has nothing to with what I said.

[khokhol]

I have been studying Russian history as a hobby for decades

If you've been studying the topic for "decades", and then you say things like "they speak essentially the same language" (in reference to Russians and Ukrainians) -- then I don't know what to tell you.

[panick21_]

First of all, many people in Ukraine speak Russian. So those people very clear 'speak essentially the same language'.

Second, I am Swiss and Swiss German is quite different then High German with somewhat different historical routes. When I was in Ukraine we were talking about languages and how they differ from each other and came to the conclusion that Swiss German <-> High German was a reasonable comparison. In some way Swiss German is more different to German then Ukrainian to Russian.

I do consider Swiss German and High German 'essentially the same language' as well. Now if Germany invaded Switzerland I would likely also argue against the notion but that's just politics.

You can of course be nitpick and quibble with the term 'essentially', the fact is they are extremely close related languages.

There is a lot of interesting history of both nationalist movement trying to influence the language. Imperial Russian tried to make Ukrainian more Russian (generally promoting Pan-Slavic policy with Russia as the leader). Specially in the Pre-WW1 period when it became increasingly clear that Ukrainian nationalism was a potential disaster for Imperial Russia. Ukrainian nationalist did the opposite, tried to remove Russian influence and promote the differences. Language unification and dis-unification is an interesting aspect of all modern nationalist development and its always political.

[khokhol]

First of all, many people in Ukraine speak Russian. So those people very clear 'speak essentially the same language'.

Yikes - you definitely lost me there, man. I'm going to have to let you hash this stuff out on your own.

[greedo]

His thread is amazing. Most pilots worldwide speak English, so naturally, all pilots are basically from the same country...