Ukraine is inhabited by Russian speakers living on historically Russian lands, which gives Moscow the right to fight Kyiv, according to pro-Kremlin propaganda.
NEWS: Russia is gathering the historical Russian lands that are currently on the territory of Ukraine, inhabited mainly by Russian speakers, said the leader of the “Another Ukraine” movement, Viktor Medvedchuk. He has stated that Zelensky is lying when speaking of Ukrainians being killed in a “genocide”. “There is no genocide: the Russian-speaking population, despite the forced Ukrainization, is the majority in Ukraine, and after the Russian-speaking regions are returned to Russia, only a few regions will remain in the country. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria will have claims to these remnants of Ukraine,” Medvedchuk noted […]
Zelensky has tried to present the Ukrainian conflict as an ethnic one, in which Ukrainians are victims of the Russian aggression. Such conflicts, he said, are resolved by dividing the country according to ethnic composition. “But if we start from this assumption, Russia should get more than three quarters of Ukraine, that is, all the territories located on the historical Russian lands,” Medvedchuk said. He also drew attention to the fact that Putin and Zelensky are talking about completely different things, but are participating in the same migration process: Zelensky is expelling Ukrainians from the country, while Putin is inviting and welcoming them to Russia.
NARRATIVES: 1. The majority of the population of Ukraine speaks Russian. 2. The territories of Ukraine are "historically Russian lands". 3. Ukraine is an artificial country and will be divided between several states, not just Russia. 4. Zelensky is expelling Ukrainians from the country, and Putin is welcoming them to Russia.
PURPOSE: To justify Russia's military aggression against Ukraine; to question the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state; to create a false perception about the ethnic and linguistic structure of Ukraine; to deny the atrocities and war crimes committed by the Russian forces in Ukraine.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: According to the 2001 national census (the last conducted in Ukraine), 67,5% of the population declared Ukrainian as their mother tongue. Russian was declared as the mother tongue by 29.6% of the population. More recent sociolinguistic research, including one conducted by the independent Razumkov institute in 2022, shows that approximately 76% of Ukrainian citizens use Ukrainian as their main language of communication, and this number increased after the Russian invasion in 2022. Even in the eastern regions, where the use of Russian was more widespread, there has been a significant increase in the use of Ukrainian language in recent years.
Ukraine is a sovereign state, with internationally recognized borders, including by the Russian Federation under the Budapest Memorandum (1994) and a series of bilateral treaties.
Even during periods when parts of present-day Ukraine were under Russian or Soviet control, the Ukrainian cultural and linguistic identity lived on. The concept of "historically Russian lands" is an ideological construct created to justify modern Russian expansionism and has no basis in international law or objective historical research.
Russian propaganda ignores a series of chapters in the history of the Ukrainian people up to the policy of forced Russification. Kyiv was first documented in 482, while Moscow appears in documents almost 700 years later, in 1147 . Ukraine truly came under Moscow's control only towards the end of the 18th century, during the reign of Catherine II, and even then, the Russian Empire was not able to assimilate it very easily. In the context of the Bolshevik revolution, the Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed in Kiev in 1918, which had diplomatic relations with a number of states, including Romania. The new Ukrainian state was conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1920. Fearing the strong nationalist trends in the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks approved in 1923 the doctrine of “autochthonization” of power in the new republics , offering Ukrainians broad cultural autonomy alongside total ideological control.
The war in Ukraine is not inter-ethnic, it’s a war between two states, triggered by the unprovoked military aggression of the Russian Federation. There is no inter-ethnic conflict between Ukrainians and Russians that would justify a "territorial division".
To say that there will be territorial claims from Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia or Bulgaria to Ukraine is aimed at creating tensions between Ukraine and its European neighbors. All of these states recognize the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, are members of NATO and the EU, and support Ukraine's efforts to defend itself against the Russian aggression. None of these countries has made territorial claims to Ukraine, and have supported it in many ways.
Ukrainian refugees have fled the country because of Russian bombing and attacks on civilian infrastructure, not because they were driven out by Zelensky. According to UNHCR, more than 10.5 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes because of the war unleashed by Russia. The forced deportations of Ukrainians to Russia, including thousands of children, are being investigated as possible war crimes by the International Criminal Court, which has issued arrest warrants for several Russian officials. Russia’s denial of genocide or other crimes committed on Ukrainian territory contradicts the facts documented by international human rights organizations, as well as UN fact-finding missions. The actions of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine, including deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure, executions, torture, rape, and forced deportations, are being investigated as possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.
CONTEXT: Viktor Medvedchuk has been the leader of various pro-Kremlin political projects in Ukraine and is a personal friend of Vladimir Putin, who baptized one of his daughters. Arrested on charges of treason by Ukrainian authorities, Medvedchuk was handed over to Moscow in September 2022 in a prisoner exchange. Since then, the Kremlin has been using Medvedchuk to create more credible propaganda messages. He is not in Ukraine and does not lead any officially registered political organization.
The false narratives in the text published by Ukraina.ru are part of the Kremlin’s broader strategy to deny the existence of a distinct Ukrainian identity and justify the invasion of February 2022. Seven months before the invasion, Vladimir Putin published a controversial article in which he challenged Ukraine’s right to exist as a separate state, arguing that Ukrainians and Russians were one people. These narratives are contradicted by historical, cultural, and political realities, as well as international law that recognizes Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
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