It has emerged that on February 27, the PM of the DNR Alexander Zakharchenko issued an edict fixing the borders of the DNR at the current frontline.
The document, posted at the website of the DNR’s Ministry of State Security, illegalizes border crossings between the DNR and “territories under the temporary authority of Ukrainian state authority” that occur outside official DNR transit points.
For context, this order was signed at around the same time that Akhmetov’s industrial empire in the LDNR was nationalized.
Since the leaders of the LDNR have little autonomy of their own, this is another datapoint that the Kremlin has decidedly given up on Minsk II, and the plan of shoving back the Donbass into Ukraine in exchange for at least a de facto recognition of Crimea as Russian.
This is a good thing. I have long argued that this “clever plan” was too clever for its own good and was as likely as not to blow up in the Kremlin’s face. In any case, the Maidanists – held hostage by armed nationalists – have themselves have made the issue moot by refusing any degree of compromise.
Ideally, Russia should just recognize the LDNR, for instance, by recognizing the results of the 2014 referendum on self-rule, which won with 89% support (mirroring a 1994 referendum, in which 84% of Donetsk and Lugansk oblast citizens voted in favor of federalizing the country). Since the DNR’s border is now formally just the frontline, it could then be moved arbitrarily; for instance, to the Dnieper.
There have been some minor hints of a decisive solution to the Ukrainian experiment. On March 2, Zakhachenko had made a strange proclamation that the Ukrainian state only has 60 days left to live. According to rumors reported by Igor Strelkov from his unnamed sources in the “elites,” Azarov is already busy “arranging the Ministerial portfolios” of a “liberated Ukraine.”
I don’t put much credence in this. There have been many such scares – both “war scares” and “total surrender” scares – in the past two years, and none of them have ended panning out. This isn’t how Putin works. He reacts to things instead of acting; and he loves leaving things ambiguous and half-done.
Nonetheless, it is obvious that some kind of shift really is occuring. According to more recent rumors, also reported by Strelkov, the increasingly evident failure of Minsk II is moving the Kremlin to solidify the LDNR’s status as a Big Tranistria. However, the LDNR has about ten times as many people as Tranistria, so subsidizing it would be a much greater strain on the checkbook. It therefore has to be made economically self-sustaining.
Thus, according to Strelkov’s sources, a number of processes have come into play.
First, there would have to be a reorganization of cadres in the Republics; to this end, commissions have been sent to the LDNR to assess their administrative, fiscal/economic, and military status. The results aren’t good – understandably so, since their existence was originally planned to be temporary (see above).
LNR PM Igor Plotnitsky is named as a prime candidate for “retirement” – unsurprisingly so, given the dark reputation he has acquired for wacking NAF commanders who came into conflict with him. To the contrary, Zakharchenko may see a rise in his status, becoming head of a united LDNR.
Strelkov has a very low opinion of the advisors to the NAF, and many of them, he claims, will sooon be retired and replaced with more capable people.
The economy is to be made more self-sustaining, so that supporting the LDNR is no longer such a burden on Russia even as the region continued sending taxes to Kiev in the past two years of the conflict. There is already a huge mass of evidence that this is happening. Namely, the nationalization of Akhmetov’s empire, following the Donbass’ blockade by far right Ukrainian militias, and the acceleration of economic integration with Russia, eased along by the recent decision to start recognizing LDNR documents.
Strelkov’s writings leave a sour aftertaste, all that poorly contained bile and heavy irony. Nor have I seen much evidence of strategic insight or tactical aptitude out of him which might compel assent to his judgement. All the same, the rumours he reports certainly exist, one hears them all the time.
Strelkov has consistently been one of the most truthful and accurate (the two are not quite the same) reporter and forecaster on this conflict. It is wishful thinking that Russia will get any gains with respect to Crimea or sanctions. This is defeat not compromise. The Russian settler minority has the power and it doesn’t want to go back to Ukraine and Ukraine doesn’t want them. Time for someone in the Kremlin to research the Pieds Noir. (That you 5371?).
Saakashvili and Gabon. Now you compare Ukraine to 1960s Algeria. Why is it that precisely Ukraine’s biggest fans who are so adept at degrading and humiliating it?
Settler minority? What are you on about?
LOL!
What new lunacy is this? Maybe you could get away with an Anschluss allusion; but comparing Ukraine to Algerie is bizarre.
Hell, if anything, the DNR are the brave rebels resisting an attack by a colonialist totalitarian government obsessed with imposing a particular notional ethnicity and culture.
Your uncritical assessment of a propaganda campaign 20 years shows your lack of real life connection with the modern FSI. The Russians didn’t arrive until the 1880’s.
Learn about the real situation.
Both Russians and Ukrainians were moving into the areas of Novorossiya since the Russian Army liberated it from the Crimean Tatar yoke in the 18th century.
The area of Donetsk-Lugansk in particular was about 40% Russian.
This isn’t even going into the fact that distinctions between Great Russians and Little Russians were widely regarded as cosmetic, as even Europeans recognized.
Where is the Ukraine on this 1898 French map?
But there are Petits Russes and Grand Russes.
Nothing wrong with this. There are also separate Congo and Congo-Brazaville, Sudan and South-Sudan.
You’ve taken our advice, Master Anatoly. No mention of Nazis and Ukronazis. Leave that sort of thing to Turks, women and teetotallers as the Big Man said himself. I suggest in future you let the present Ottoman Sultan deal with the matter directly.
AK: I have never used the term Ukronazis. Believe it or not, but The Saker and I are not the same person.
Keep in mind that Ukrainians/Little Russians were a significant element of that Russian Army.
Novorossiya was generally about 70% Little Russians/Ukrainians and 15%-20% Great Russians/Russians. Most of the settlers were just Ukrainians moving south.
Europeans may not have noticed the differences but the Little Russian (Ukrainian) language had been standardized (and even largely banned as such, once) and differentiated on the census from the Great Russian (Russian) language, something that had not been done with actual dialects such as Pomor in the north or the Volga dialect.
Here’s the Russian census. Great Russian, Little Russian and Belarussian are listed as separate languages under the “Russian” category.
Or Scots-Irish of Belfast resisting Irish rule, had the entire island become one country after independence.
Oh dear, I’ve just been sorting out my bookmarks and you did ask.
Although none of these is the absolutely brilliant German map of 1880 which positions all the various colonies in the former Wild Lands to the South West of present Donbass. It shows the area just after Hughes built the railways. Some are incomplete. Hughesovka is not named yet. Neither is Gorlivka. I seem to have lost the bookmark. I only found it last week. It shows the Cossacks too. I’ll post it if I find it.
A French map of the 17th Century showing Ukraine
http://i.tyzhden.ua/content/digest/week/june/1.06/map.jpg
This one is brilliant. It has huge explanatory power. Look at the population growth in the Lower Don and Lower Volga starting in 1810. The 1913 map makes it clear those were Great Russians arriving even without knowing the history. The 1913 map also shows a tongue of Russian settlement into the Donbass although the modern map above shows that they were urban islands. It only shows the German colony, not the Greeks or the Jews. Which is a pity. All these areas are dry. Watering plough horses, even the small ones used in Russia was difficult until better wells and critically wind pumps arrived. Then the population exploded. The same in the US prairies, Australia and the Pampas. The High Veldt too.
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/russia/eurrusdemhist17961917.html
This is a 19th language map with a big Ukraine. It shows the Russian, German and Greek colonies on the Wild Lands. It doesn’t show the Jews. There were also, (other sources not the German map) some strange kind of Baptists there as well. The Donbass was to the inhabitated North East of the Wild Lands, which were largely the Nogai highlands.
http://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/images/1800.EUR.languages-CWA169.jpg
The 1897 census map which so upset Mark Sleboda that he blocked me on Facebook for drawing attention to it. Some people don’t want to leave their comfort zone. Note all the dots in the Don and Volga valleys where remnant pockets of Ukrainian/Little Russian speakers remain surrounded by that huge wave of Russian settlement. I am Welsh. I see imperialist intrusion in different light to you.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Ethnic-Ukrainians.jpg
By 1915, a very big Ukraine was on French maps.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Genetic+Map+of+Europe&rlz=1CASMAC_enGB681GB682&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLxr6_lcDSAhXMBsAKHfTHBDIQsAQIGw&biw=727&bih=623#imgrc=kolWXxE0oxZ39M:
Russian and Ukrainian maps from the early 1930’s showing much larger Ukraines than todays. However, also note that Donetsk is, as before, part of Rostov not Ekatrinskaya. The 1919 French map also shows a much bigger Ukraine. Even Western Saratov is in some of these.
http://republic.com.ua/article/29487-VelikaYa-Ukraina-ot-Tisy-do-KaspiYa.html
A Ukrainian point of view.
http://nv.ua/publications/23-karty-ukrainy-specproekt-nv-ko-dnyu-nezavisimosti-8167.html
They are islands of Russian settlement.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/russians_ethnic_94.jpg
The Ukrainians have not forgotten. Russians complain with great hypocrisy about the (extremely favourable) treatment of the Russian language in Ukraine.Yet there is not a single primary school, far less a Liberal Arts college that teaches in Little Russian/Ukrainian anywhere in Russia. But there is a substantial endemic non immigrant population.
http://www.zakerzonia.com/
No Moscow on these maps. Moscow happened because the climate warmed and the Khazars were defeated unblocking the Don route (superior to the Dneipr or Volga because you could get much further South from your Northern warehouse before deciding between Byzantium of Persia as a destination – to simplify). I have a lot to say about the symbolism of this. No time now. I am finally planning a blog. Reposting this comment might be part of it.
http://www.sras.org/theodosius_vladimir_russia
This genetic map doesn’t show any Ukrainians but I suspect that it shows more autosomal variation between Russian populations than you would find across the whole UK.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058552
My link to a map of the Khlemnitsky rebellion has disappeared too. But the point remains, there is and was a Ukraine.
When Ukraine started to go sour, I was indifferent. Russia is much more interesting. However, the massive scale of lying (you excluded) and the total hypocrisy of the English speaking pro Russian web to say nothing of the White Russian nationalists (to be kind) has greatly repulsed me greatly (OK Russia Insider mostly for the English speakers). I can’t see anything wonderful about Ukraine either but it is actually an independent country and was entitled to mutually unenthusiastic negotiations with the EU without foreign interference. The Russian security elite need to get the message that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I agree with you that Medvedev’s light does not shine all that brightly. Just how did he get put in charge of Gazprom? He is not going to do the turnaround. Without one Russia is the new Argentina.
This isn’t the German map either but it does show Germans and Ukrainians as the main elements in Saratov, a long way from modern Ukraine’s borders. Half the people I meet have a surname ending in -Ko (slight exaggeration but not much). Perhaps I have encountered less enthusiasm for the war in Saratov than other Anglophone have found in Moscow.Full of Tatars too. Hundreds of headscarves on Fridays.
Flame off.
Got it. You will see the Wild Lands near Maripoul are full of Greeks, Germans and the not usually mentioned Jews as well as the Baptists other sources tell me were there.
http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~243076~5513278
You are a true victim of big lie propaganda. REad Goering on the subject (not Goebbels, Goering).
There is no and there can be no equivalence between the Russian language and Ukrainian dialect – мова. Ukrainians themselves prefer using Russian. http://www.gallup.com/poll/109228/russian-language-enjoying-boost-postsoviet-states.aspx
Basically, мова has been promoted by the nationalists and regime in Kiev in order to remove Ukrainians from Russian cultural space. Without pressure from the top, мова would have disappeared everywhere in Ukraine except Galicia, as people would simply use language that they are comfortable with – Russian.
If it affects Russia’s interests that means Russia has a stake in this and has a right to intervene.
You are an ignorant, credulous, prattling fool.
It is unclear what your point is, mostly it seems to consist of tilting at strawmen and going off on tangents.
The first French map prominently features the Loca Deserta/Dikie Polya encompassing the entirely of southern modern Ukraine. This reinforces my point that the region was a land of flyspeck settlements harassed by Turkic raiders before the Russian Empire conquered and civilized it (i.e. not “Ukrainian” by any stretch of the imagination).
Second link shows population growth in European Russia during the 19th century. Of course it would be higher in the south because that entire place was mostly empty during the 18th. Then the population is far below the land’s carrying capacity in a pre-demographic transition society, it tends to grow rapidly. What is your point here?
Blotches of majority Russian settlement in Ukraine correspond to the cities. That is a very well known fact and has more to do with malorossy acculturating into Russians on migrating to the cities (a process violently interrupted by the Bolsheviks, to whom Ukraine owes its existence).
He’s a slightly better than average, but otherwise run of the mill, troll and poster boy for the Unz Review ignore function. I don’t understand why people take the time to read his comments, let alone respond to them.
You seem to be making a backward point. Under normal and natural circumstances, when peasants moved into a “foreign populated” city they retained their own language and the language of the city switched to the peasant language. This was the case with previously German-speaking Prague, for example. This natural process was present when Lenin took a hands-off approach to the language question, leaving it to the locals (Bolshevik apologists perversely refer to the fact that rural Ukrainians were taught in their own language rather than that of the urban colonists as some type of unnatural B0lshevik doing) but was violently interrupted by the Bolsheviks after the 1920s.
The process of Ukrainianization of cities began prior tot he Bolsheviks, when the Tsar’s government relaxed its prohibiti0n against the Little Russian/Ukrainian language. There were about 65% as many Ukrainian-speakers as Russian speakers in urban Ekaterynoslav guberniya in 1897, for example:
http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus_lan_97.php?reg=142
The Russian nationalist fantasy. Somewhere out there, is there a Roman nationalist who thinks the same way about Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Catalan “dialects?”
If the results of this poll were valid, basically 0% of people outside western Ukraine speak Ukrainian. Anyone who has visited central Ukraine, where the rural population is largely Ukrainian-speaking, would know that this is false. Even urban Kiev itself its at least 10% Ukrainian-speaking.
You tried to bring up this poll before, and were shown a much more comprehensive poll with realistic figures.
How many times must something be repeated for you, so that you learn?
http://www.kiis.com.ua/materials/articles_HVE/16_linguaethnical.pdf
Page 4. Over 22,000 interviews, representative of the country. When asked which language the people would want to conduct the interview in (what the Gallup poll measured), there was no statistical difference between preference for Russian or Ukrainian (that is, about a 50/50 split).
When asked which language was easier to speak, 41.2% Ukrainian, 44.2% Russian, 14.5% both equally in 2002.
I wrote to you before:
“But keep clinging to your silly 83% figure. It demonstrates your “objectivity” every time.”
I see you have followed my advice 🙂
BTW with Crimea and urban Donbas gone, the balance within Ukraine has tilted in favor of the Ukrainian language.
By that token, the West, China and others potentially affected by events in Russia have a “right” to intervene in that country.
In the absence of artificial pushes one way or the other, the Ukrainian (and Belorussian) languages inevitably give way to Russian.
Why?
More useful, more prestigious. In Belorussia, the Belarussianizers were even compared to foreign aggressors by the population.
Incomparable, misleading comparisons. Czechs cannot assimilate into Germans.
He didn’t, though. Ukrainization was aggressively promoted by the state. The proponents of the triune Russian nation (“Great Russian chauvinists”) – that is, standard nation-builders, whose equivalents in France had united the country around the Parisian dialect of the French language – were dismissed from the universities and the media, and in some cases, outright repressed and executed.
Stalin merely saw that Ukrainization had gone too far, and put the Ukrainian nationalists on the shit-list as well.
No more so than Danish or Norwegian would inevitably give way to Swedish.
Sure they can. It would be more difficult because the languages are quite different, but certainly possible. Vienna is full of people of Czech descent. Had Bohemia been ruled by a Berlin or Vienna-based Bolshevik government aggressively promoting the prestigious German language to Czech peasants moving into the German-speaking city, Prague would have remained a German-speaking city.
Germanizing the countryside would have been more difficult (peasants use less of what they learn in school in daily life than do urban people) but the Bolsheviks failed to Russify most of the Ukrainian countryside, too.
Here’s an article about Prague’s German literary tradition
.
At the time the Bolsheviks left the state alone with respect to cultural stuff, and local Ukrainians, many not even Bolsheviks, played a large role (Hrushevsky was back, for example). So the process was natural as it had been in Prague: peasants moving into cities were taught in their own language by their own people as teachers, and cities became more Ukrainian-speaking as the population grew and became more peasant. Russians weren’t forcefully Ukrainianized (neither were Germans in Prague as the city became Czech-speaking), they were just getting outnumbered by newcomers in the growing cities. Eventually this natural process was interrupted by the Bolsheviks.
This idea itself was an unnatural foreign one imported to Ukraine. And I suspect you are getting your nomenclature wrong. The original Russian nationalist approach involving an all- Russian nation proposed that Little Russian and Great Russian were co-equal heirs of Rus. These guys standardized the Little Russian language, hated Poles and Jews, promoted Orthodoxy and loyalty to the Tsar. In many ways, Russian nationalism was more developed among the Little Russians than in Russia itself. They had a cause (“how can our Russian Orthodox peasants be owned by Catholic Polish landlords under the eyes of the Russian Tsar?”) and a model in the Poles.
At some point the center, spooked by Polish nationalism and fearful of any local particularism, “betrayed” the Little Russians and pushed the Great Russian language. Maybe the Russian central authorities were prescient, or maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophesy, but this turned the Little Russians into anti-Russian Ukrainians.
A further elaboration: in the mid 19th century there was conflict within the Russian State about how to deal with the “Little Russian” Russian nationalists. The governor generals, Annenkov and Bezak (the latter was married to a local girl, from a Cossack officer family) supported the Little Russians while the Center (interior minister Valuev) promoted a Great Russian assimilationist ideology. Valuev was the one who claimed that Little Russian was merely a dialect. Valuev was a sort of liberal, who also promoted the Jews and Poles at the expense of the Orthodox Little Russians (Valuev had close relationships with the Gintsberg and Brodky familes) and blocked attempts by Little Russian activists (supported by the Little Russian-friendly governor general) to prevent Catholics from expanding their land ownership.
Obviously Valuev’s approach won out in the end.
I am no fan whatsoever of Ukraine. Being sceptical about Russian nationalism does not make me a fan of Ukrainian incompetence. They have almost the same cultural background hence the rampant popular fascism in both countries.
The Algerian point is the the French found it hard to reconcile themselves to Algeria being a foreign place that didn’t want them. Like Russians in Ukraine or the British in India, they mostly thought their influence benign. And maybe it mostly was but that is not how the colonies view these things. They need the myths or realities of national resistance and the Imperialists deny them.
From one point of view, as you said, it is a cunning move to set up the border as per the front, so you can push the border as the front moves. On the other more realistic side, to be self-sustainable and successful DNR and LNR must have a full control within the old administrative borders. That is the old Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts were created within their borders on a purpose as full-sized industrial regional complexes. It is like if Hitler and Stalin signed a peace treaty in December 1941 with the border just 20 km from Moscow and Stalin thought that the USSR could go on like nothing had happened. So they must have claim the whole territory of the former oblasts, not only that they control. They may name the uncontrolled territory as “temporary occupied”, but they must have a claim (probably it may be said in their constitution). In this position they have given up the other territory and at the same time they are dreaming of conquering Kiev, which is foolish and unreal. They must have forgotten that they are called Donetsk and Lugansk republics and not the “all-Ukrainian resistance movement”. They even fail to unite into a single Novorussia (though real historical Novorussia is much wider than those two republics).
That said, even if they want to expand their territory outside the former administrative border, and advance further on, as you said, right up to Dnieper or beyond, that move will have to be done within an entirely new framework, not “people’s republics”, but something new, like Novorussia 2.0. Though, it is very unlikely to happen, ever.
Ukrainians did not exist then, all right. All the Eastern Slavs were Russians, so your point does not make sense. Or rather it only makes sense within the Soviet-Ukrainian national mythology about the existence of Ukrainians since at least the 14th c. (the ultra-nationalist POV shifts that even further, right to the 6th c.).
Wrong analogy. Both two Congos and two Sudans are post-colonial absolutely artificial creations, they reflects nothing, but the colonial policy “divide and rule”. There are even no Congolese or Sudanese nations (ethnic groups or tribes) or languages (both use the languages of the former metropoles), they are rather conglomerates of hundreds of tribes artificially and randomly put together or divided on a whim of the European conquerors.
On the other hand Great, Little, White, etc., Russias were/are rather like Wessex, Sussex and Essex, etc., just regional names within one entity. I bet you do not consider Wessex, Sussex and Essex different nations which should live independently from each other.
I’ve seen a 17-century map of Africa where there was Congo. So what? What do 300-500 year-old maps prove?
There have been no school or universities in the Wessex or Essex “languages” as well. Or even in Scots. Or Bavarian, Sicilian, Gascon, Provencal, Moravian, and so on. So what was/is so specific about Little Russian?
Do you need a full list of idioms that are considered dialects and not languages? Asturian, Leonese, Extramaduran, Andalusian, Gascon, Occitan, Provencal, Lombardian, Napolitan, Sicilian, just to name few. And their difference with the official dominant languages is often much, much greater than between Russian/Ukrainian or Russian/Belarusian. Or well, even with Catalan some Valencians consider their language is Valencian, not Catalan, but Catalans do not think so. Yes, some listed idioms have had seen some revival movements recently, and even a limited recognition, all right. But you’ve asked about nationalists, so there hardly ever exist a Spanish, French or Italian nationalist who would consider those dialects/languages to be good reasons to give independence to particular regions. They are not suicidal.
As Anatoly rightly noticed, your analogy with Germans in the Czech Republic is false. Why don’t you bring a more close analogy, that is Moravians? Do you even know that there is such an idiom? I bet you have no idea, as you’ve already proved many times your zero competence in linguistics. Anyway, there is such a thing as Moravian which differs much from standard Czech, some Morvians even consider it’s worth to be called a language, and there are even Moravian separatists, but mostly it just wishful thinking and they continue to use standard Czech and live within the united Czech Republic. I will say even more. In the Czech Republic they count Moravians separately in censuses, just like in the imperial census 1897; so your argument about three branches of the Russian nation in the census being a sufficient basis for Ukrainian or Belarusian separatism is false. So after that, why must Russians think about Ukraine (and Belarus) any different than Bohemians think about Moravians? Why should Russians blindly follow the Bolshevik national policy “divide and rule” and respect the Soviet borders*, and not consider the Czech example (or many other: French, German, Italian)?
*As for the borders. Who are real Sovoks: those who consider the Soviet borders sacred and holy, or who think they are null and void? Who are real Sovoks: those who consider Soviet laws (e.g. about the Crimea or Eastern Poland) indisputable, or who think they are of a questionable legal status because the Soviet regime might be itself illegal?
Thanks for demonstrating your ignorance again, our little Sovok friend.
Moravian is closer to Czech, than Ukrainian is to Russian. Slovak is closer to Czech than Ukrainian is to Russian, and Moravian is somewhat of a transitional speech between Czech and Slovak. If you knew something about the Russian and Ukrainian languages you wouldn’t make the analogy you made, Sharikov.
Russians can think what they want. Some can think that the moon landing was a hoax. Others can think that Ukrainian is as similar to Russian as Moravian is to standard Czech.
I like the current de facto borders, which in the East are the February Brest-Litovsk borders , following the old governates (they exclude the parts of Donbas currently under rebel control, and Crimea). These borders, incidentally, rather closely follow the self-identified linguistic boundary.
Here are the Luhansk raions, showing % who identify Ukrainian as their native language (obviously, not the same as % who actually speak Ukrainian – but this self-identification is a good proxy for self-identification). The front line is in blue:
http://i074.radikal.ru/1409/45/9986fd4001cf.png
The warzone itself is solidly within the Russian language zone (no wonder those living on the front line resent the Ukrainian troops), but this war has divided Luhansk oblast into a northern more-rural Ukrainian area and a southern more-urban Russian one. I suspect most of the Donbas Ukrainian nationalist militiamen are from the northern parts.
At any rate, yours is a silly argument: a defense of Soviet borders would mean the desire to reconstitute the USSR and join the Republics together again. Ukraine’s entrance into the Eurasian Customs Union, prevented by Maidan, would have been a huge step towards accomplishing that. It was a very Sovok thing to do, and unsurprisingly it was supported most strongly bu the most Sovok part of the Ukrainian population.
You are demonstrating your ignorance again.
All Eastern Slavs were Russians in the sense that Spaniards and Italians are “Romans.”
Little Russian “Russian” nationalists who standardized the Little Russian language and wanted it taught in Little Russian schools, who opposed Poles, Catholics and Jews, whose Russian nationalism was for awhile more developed than in Russia itself, and who saw the Tsar as the defender of the Russian people saw it in this way.
The modern idea of Russia held by Russian nationalists is of course quite different. It is Great Russia. The Little Russians saw themselves as Russians, but not as Great Russians. They didn’t see their language as a dialect of Great Russian, they considered Great Russian and Little Russian to be both equal Russian languages, as Spanish and Italian are two Roman languages.
https://alternativetransport.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/lexical-distance-among-the-languages-of-europe-2-1-mid-size.png
Ukraine has more words in common with Polish than it does with Russian.
Before you whine about Tishchenko, his conclusions were corroborated by this study (pg. 323 for the graph) involving statistical analysis of translations of the Bible. It too shows Ukrainian clustering closer to Polish than to Russian. Written Russian is closer to written Bulgarian than it is to Ukrainian. Danish and Norwegian are more similar than Russian and Ukrainian.