Russia-Ukraine conflict blurs distinction between memory and myth

For many Ukrainians, the Russian invasion has only served to accentuate differences and not commonality between the two peoples. (AFP)
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Updated 20 March 2022
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Russia-Ukraine conflict blurs distinction between memory and myth

  • Conflict has frayed ties of family, faith, culture and history that bind the two peoples
  • Russian invasion may have accentuated differences at the expense of commonalities

DUBAI: As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth week, any lingering fondness that Ukrainians may have had for shared bonds of kinship and culture is hard to come by. The overwhelming feeling now seems to be a blend of anger, resentment and bitterness that is likely to last generations.

Underlying the current attempt to bring Ukraine back into the fold of Russia appears to be the conviction that the two peoples are one and the same — the product of a shared history spanning centuries.

The Kremlin has said its “special military operation” is aimed at protecting Russia’s security and that of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

However, for many Ukrainians, particularly those who came of age after 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine declared independence, the invasion has only served to accentuate the ethnic, political, and cultural differences between Russia and Ukraine at the expense of their commonalities.

“My paternal grandparents are from Ukraine,” Eugene B. Kogan, a researcher at Harvard Business School who emigrated to the US from Russia in the 1990s, told Arab News. “The unexpected effect of this war is that I have a renewed interest in understanding where my ancestors came from and in my family history.”

Far from drawing Russians and Ukrainians closer, the invasion, which started on Feb. 24, appears to have driven a deeper wedge between the two peoples, while fanning the flames of Ukrainian nationalism and cementing further the political and defense ties that bind Ukraine to Western Europe.

Regardless of the seething bitterness, indeed hate, that consumes many Ukrainians as their cities are pulverized by the Russian military, the two peoples share undeniable bonds, linked by a common thread of history in everything from religion and written script to politics, geography, social customs, and cuisine.

In a recent opinion piece in The Guardian, Alex Halberstadt, author of “Young Heroes of the Soviet Union,” said: “Ukrainians and Russians share much of their culture and history, and an estimated 11 million Russians have Ukrainian relatives. Millions more have Ukrainian spouses and friends.”

Both nations, alongside Belarus, can trace their cultural ancestry back to the medieval kingdom of Kievan Rus, whose 9th century Prince Vladimir I, the Grand Duke of Kyiv, was baptized in Crimea after rejecting paganism, becoming the first Christian ruler of all Russia. In fact, in 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, he cited this moment in history to help justify his actions.




The former dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. (AFP)

Religious identity has played a part in the justification of the war on the grounds of defending the Moscow-oriented Orthodox Christian population of Ukraine, who are divided between an independent-minded group based in Kyiv and another loyal to its patriarch in Moscow.

Leaders of both Ukrainian Orthodox communities, however, have fiercely denounced the invasion, as have Ukraine’s significant Catholic minority.

Another factor is demographics. When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, a policy of Ukrainian out-bound and Russian in-bound migration saw the ethnic Ukrainian share of the population decline from 77 percent in 1959 to 73 percent in 1991.

Upon Ukraine’s independence, however, this trend was thrown into reverse. By the turn of the 21st century, Ukrainians made up more than three-quarters of the population, while Russians made up the largest minority.

Modern Ukraine shows influences of many other cultures in the post-Soviet neighborhood — not just Russia. Prior to its incorporation into the Soviet Union, the country was subject to long periods of domination by Poland and Lithuania. It enjoyed a brief bout of independence between 1918 and 1920, during which several of its border regions were controlled by Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, all of which left their mark.

We always thought of ourselves as brothers and sisters. We have so much shared history and to see what is happening is even more heartbreaking because of that.

The Russian and Ukrainian languages, while both stemming from the same branch of the Slavic language family, have their own distinct features. The Ukrainian language shares many similarities with Polish.

Although Russian is the most widely spoken minority language in Ukraine, a significant number of people in the country also speak Yiddish, Polish, Belarusian, Romanian, Moldovan, Bulgarian, Crimean Turkish, and Hungarian.

Russia has left an indelible mark, nonetheless. During both the tsarist and the Soviet periods, Russian was the common language of government administration and public life in Ukraine, with the native tongue of the local population reduced to a secondary status.

In the decade after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the Ukrainian language was initially afforded equal status with Russian. But, during the 1930s, a policy of Russification was implemented, and it was only in 1989 that Ukrainian became the country’s official language once again, its status confirmed in the 1996 constitution.

Many of the present-day commonalities between the two cultures are actually the result of long spells of Russification, first under the Romanovs and later under Joseph Stalin when the Soviet dictator unleashed his disastrous collectivization policy on the Ukrainian population.




While Ukraine enjoyed a brief period of independence from the end of the First World War in 1918 until 1920, for much of its history it has been a junior partner in its own existence — despite this, many Ukrainians and Russians have familial ties to each other, with close cultural and linguistic bonds. (Getty Images)

Nadia Kaabi-Linke, a Ukrainian-Arab artist based in Berlin, was due to open a solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv on March 4 but is now back in Berlin helping Ukrainian refugees.

She told Arab News: “I would not put the relationship between Ukraine and Russia in terms of similarities right now because, after the invasion, many things have changed in my mind and in the core of my own being.

“I have started to question my mother tongue — my Ukrainian mother spoke to me in Russian — and I never did before. I even speak Russian to my two children.

“I will not discuss differences and similarities, but I will put it in a way that I might not have ever done before the invasion. Now I feel it is fitting to say this is colonization,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, it is not just people with Ukrainian heritage who feel that the rhetoric of nationalism has poisoned a once close relationship, pulling the two peoples apart.




A body covered with a blanket lies among damages in a residential area after shelling in Kyiv on March 18, 2022, as Russian troops try to encircle the Ukrainian capital. (AFP)

Russian-born Tanya Kronfli, who has lived in the Gulf for nearly 10 years, told Arab News: “I feel heartbroken, sad, angry, and helpless. We always thought of each other as brothers and sisters. We have so much shared history and to see what is happening is even more heartbreaking because of that.”

Kronfli pointed out that Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians were “from different countries but are the same people. Our languages are nearly the same and many families have intermarried. It’s such a mix with many similarities.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly said that NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and Ukraine’s ambition to join the alliance created a security dilemma for Russia. It has continued to demand Ukraine’s disarmament and guarantees that it would never join NATO — conditions that Kyiv and NATO have ruled out.

Kogan said: “Another security analysis is that the Kremlin felt uneasy with Ukrainians’ Westward leanings and democratic aspirations, thanks lately to the efforts of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Past color revolutions (Georgia in 2003, Ukraine 2004, Kyrgyzstan 2005) and Zelensky’s West-leaning ambitions are of deep concern to the Kremlin’s sense of control over Russia’s near abroad.”

Intent on halting Ukraine’s drift to the West, Moscow has rejected the idea of Ukrainian national identity, saying that Russia’s Ukrainian brothers and sisters have been taken hostage by a Western-backed Nazi cabal, and that Russian troops would be welcomed as liberators.




A Ukrainian policeman secures the area by a five-storey residential building that partially collapsed after a shelling in Kyiv. (AFP)

“One often-heard argument is that the post-Soviet Russian leadership never accepted Ukraine as a nation and Ukrainians as a separate people requiring a geopolitically viable nation state in the international system,” Kogan added.

In a speech just days before the invasion began, Putin defended his formal recognition of the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics by declaring that Ukraine was an invention of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, who he said had wrongly endowed Ukraine with a sense of statehood by allowing it to enjoy autonomy within the Soviet Union.

“Modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia, more specifically the Bolshevik, communist Russia,” Putin said in a televised address.

“This process began practically immediately after the 1917 revolution, and moreover Lenin and his associates did it in the sloppiest way in relation to Russia — by dividing, tearing from her pieces of her own historical territory.”

It remains unclear whether all Russians believe this interpretation of history or consider it a plausible moral justification for the invasion.

It is true that through wars, disasters, and Soviet tyranny, Russians and Ukrainians, living side by side as neighbors or compatriots, managed to preserve their kinship.

Nevertheless, for many Ukrainians, their distinctive history, identity, and sovereign right to choose their own destiny are evidently not matters open to debate.


Macron to visit Meloni after rivalry creates tension on Ukraine, trade

Updated 03 June 2025
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Macron to visit Meloni after rivalry creates tension on Ukraine, trade

  • Macron is a fervent pro-European who has had a long rapport with Donald Trump
  • Meloni is a nationalist with a strong transatlantic tilt who seems more ideologically aligned with the US president

PARIS/ROME: French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday, seeking to improve relations amid tensions between the two European leaders over Ukraine, trade and relations with the United States.

Macron is a fervent pro-European who has had a long rapport with Donald Trump, while Meloni is a nationalist with a strong transatlantic tilt who seems more ideologically aligned with the US president. They have advocated different — even competing — approaches to the new Trump era.

Meloni, whose country has a large trade surplus with the US, has sought to keep Europe aligned with the US, using the slogan “Make the West great again” in a meeting with Trump in Washington in April. Macron has pushed for the EU to take a more independent approach.

On the Russian war in Ukraine, Meloni has been skeptical about Macron’s “coalition of the willing” and a Franco-British plan put forward earlier this year to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace agreement. Sending troops would be deeply unpopular in Italy.

Hostility flared publicly in recent weeks, with officials close to Macron and Meloni privately or openly criticizing their respective initiatives over Ukraine or trade.

Meloni was criticized in Italy for not traveling to Kyiv with Macron and the German, British and Polish leaders on May 10 and then for missing a call with Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a summit in Albania a few days later.

After Meloni explained her absence by saying the meetings were about sending troops to Ukraine, her government was furious that Macron said publicly that the meetings were about a ceasefire and seemed to equate her justification with “Russian disinformation.”

French and Italian officials said Macron had taken the initiative to hold Tuesday’s meeting and sought to play down talk of a rift, saying the meeting and a working dinner would be an opportunity for Macron to show “respect” and “friendship.”

“The president is available to all of our European partners, whatever the political persuasion may be,” an Elysee official told reporters.

The Elysee said the two would discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, the Mercosur trade deal and US tariffs, as well as industrial cooperation between the two countries, including Franco-Italian carmaker Stellantis, which appointed a new Italian chief executive last month.

Italian officials said the meeting was meant to “lay the foundations for a further strengthening of relations” and added that talks would also address the situation in the Middle East and Libya.

Both Italy and France are worried Russia might boost its presence in eastern Libya, to keep a foothold in the Mediterranean after Moscow’s ally President Bashar Assad was ousted in Syria in December.

“This Macron-Meloni meeting isn’t about rekindling Franco-Italian friendship. It’s about necessity, not nostalgia,” said Francesco Galietti of Rome-based consultancy Policy Sonar, saying the two capitals should find common ground on Libya “fast.”


French prosecutors treating Tunisian’s murder as suspected terrorism

Updated 03 June 2025
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French prosecutors treating Tunisian’s murder as suspected terrorism

  • Hichem Miraoui was shot 5 times by his white neighbor last week, in what police believe was a racist killing
  • It follows mounting concerns over hate crimes against Muslims in the country

LONDON: Prosecutors in France investigating the murder of a Tunisian man are treating the case as a suspected racist attack, The Times reported on Tuesday.

Hichem Miraoui, a 46-year-old hairdresser who had lived in France for 14 years, was shot five times on Saturday by his white neighbor, a 53-year-old named as Christophe B.

The involvement of counterterrorism prosecutors instead of criminal prosecutors in the alleged far-right killing is a first in France.

It follows mounting concerns over hate crimes against Muslims in the country after Malian man Aboubakar Cisse, 22, was stabbed to death outside a mosque in April.

In last week’s killing in the southern town of Puget-sur-Argens, a 25-year-old Turkish man was also shot but survived. The killer fled the scene by car but his partner alerted police, who arrested him.

Christophe B, a sports shooting enthusiast who carried gun permits, had earlier posted videos on social media declaring that he planned to kill foreigners.

He urged his compatriots to do the same, and in one video praised the late founder of France’s National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau described the killing of Miraoui as a “racist act.” However, the minister was previously criticized for what anti-racism groups described as an inadequate response to Cisse’s murder.

Counterterrorism authorities were also questioned for failing to treat the Malian national’s killing as terrorism, with the investigation into the case being carried out by criminal prosecutors.

Retailleau on Tuesday visited the Tunisian Embassy in Paris to express solidarity with the community.

The Tunisian diaspora in France numbers more than 1 million people. More than 6 million Muslims reside in the country, about 10 percent of the population.

“Racism in France and elsewhere is a poison, and we see clearly that it is a poison which kills. Every racist act is an anti-French act,” Retailleau said.

Official government data shows that racist, xenophobic and anti-religious crimes rose by 11 percent in the country last year.

However, such crimes in France are also “vastly underreported” because “victims often don’t trust the police or the authorities,” said Jean-Marie Burguburu, chairman of the National Consultative Human Rights Commission.


Police probe missing Briton case in Malaysia

Updated 03 June 2025
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Police probe missing Briton case in Malaysia

  • Johnson-Doyle was last seen on May 27 in the bustling Bangsar district
  • Police have asked for the public “not to speculate” about Johnson-Doyle’s disappearance

KUALA LUMPUR: The disappearance of a British man last week in Malaysia’s capital is being investigated from “all angles,” police said Tuesday.

A missing person’s report was filed, identifying the man as 25-year-old Jordan Johnson-Doyle, Kuala Lumpur police said.

Johnson-Doyle was last seen on May 27 in the bustling Bangsar district, known for its nightlife, trendy bars and cafes, according to local media reports.

“A detailed investigation, from all angles, is underway,” Brickfields district police chief Ku Mashariman Ku Mahmood told AFP.

“Those with any information are urged to contact their nearest police station,” Ku Mashariman added in a statement.

Johnson-Doyle’s mother Leanne Burnett, 44, told the Free Malaysia Today news website that her husband had traveled to Kuala Lumpur, adding “we are distraught and pray that he’s well somewhere.”

She said his family was “seeking the help of anyone who saw him at his last-known location to come forward and inform the police.”

Burnett said she was traveling to Malaysia with another son to help with the search.

Police have asked for the public “not to speculate” about Johnson-Doyle’s disappearance.

The British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur confirmed Tuesday that it would assist Johnson-Doyle’s family without naming them.

“We are supporting the family of a British man reported missing in Malaysia,” it said in a statement.

Local reports said Johnson-Doyle, a software engineer, was on a solo backpacking tour around Southeast Asia when he disappeared.


Modi’s soaring Indian aviation ambitions face many headwinds

Updated 03 June 2025
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Modi’s soaring Indian aviation ambitions face many headwinds

  • India’s rapid pace of aviation growth risks losing steam if plane shortages, infrastructure challenges and taxation issues are not addressed
  • Hostilities with neighbor Pakistan also causing Indian airlines to take large, expensive detours around Pakistani airspace, requiring more fuel

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-profile attendance at a global airlines conference this week underscores how much India is banking on a boom in aviation to support wider development goals, but headwinds to its ambitions are gathering force.

Undeterred by the uncertainty gripping the aviation sector globally due to trade tensions and shaky consumer confidence, India’s biggest airlines are plowing ahead with orders for new planes, following record deals two years ago.

However, the rapid pace of growth risks losing steam if plane shortages, infrastructure challenges and taxation issues are not addressed, industry officials warned at the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting.

Hostilities with neighbor Pakistan are also causing Indian airlines to take large, expensive detours around Pakistani airspace, requiring more fuel and passenger care.

Carriers have asked the Indian government to waive some fees and provide tax exemptions, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters, but it is not clear if it will provide any help, despite its high-flying rhetoric.

New Delhi says it wants India to be a job-creating global aviation hub along the lines of Dubai, which currently handles much of India’s international traffic.

“In the coming years, the aviation sector is expected to be at the center of massive transformation and innovation, and India is ready to embrace these possibilities,” Modi told global aviation leaders on Monday.

But the transformation will require billions of dollars of investment in airports and industry supply chains, and a revamp of regulations, industry officials said.

The numbers look promising.

IATA forecasts passenger traffic in India will triple over the next 20 years and the country has set a target of increasing the number of airports to as many as 400 by 2047, up from 157 in 2024.

“We are fast emerging as a strategic connector country ... India is a natural connector of the skies and aviation as well,” India’s Civil Aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu told global airline CEOs in New Delhi.

Already the world’s third-largest aviation market by seats after the US and China, there is significant potential for India to grow.

The world’s most populous nation, India accounts for around 17.8 percent of people but only 4.2 percent of global air passengers, according to IATA.

A record 174 million Indian domestic and international passengers flew in 2024, compared to 730 million in China, IATA data shows.

“The outlook is potentially a very positive one for both the Indian economy and air transport industry. However, such outcomes are not guaranteed,” IATA said in a report on the Indian market.

Industry executives and analysts said more work lies ahead in scaling aviation-related infrastructure, updating rules, lowering taxes and making life easier for airlines.

“Even the regulators will agree that they need to update their regulation, because there is a reason why India is not punching above its weight. In fact, it is punching very much below its weight,” Association of Asia Pacific Airlines Director General Subhas Menon said.

Dubai-based Emirates, for example, says capacity restrictions on foreign airlines need to be relaxed for the industry to reach its full growth potential.

“For every seat we offer, particularly in the peaks, we’ve got three to 10 people trying to get it,” Emirates President Tim Clark told reporters.

Among other problems, India lacks enough domestic maintenance, repair and overhaul facilities to care for its fleet, making it overly dependent on foreign shops at a time of stiff competition for repair slots, particularly for engines.

Global airlines have aircraft sitting on the ground because there aren’t enough facilities available for servicing them, IATA Director General Willie Walsh said.

“I think airframe maintenance is a huge opportunity for India because you require labor and you require skills. And that’s something that I know India is investing in,” Walsh said, in response to a Reuters question at a press conference.

Airline growth globally is being tempered by extended delays to deliveries of new, more fuel-efficient planes due to supply chain issues.

India’s largest airline IndiGo has been leasing aircraft to allow it to expand internationally while it waits for new planes. This week it partnered with Air France-KLM , Virgin Atlantic and Delta to extend the reach of IndiGo tickets using those airlines’ networks.


Moscow poses no threat to Britain, says Russia’s UK embassy

Updated 03 June 2025
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Moscow poses no threat to Britain, says Russia’s UK embassy

  • Russia’s embassy issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing what it described as “a fresh salvo of anti-Russian rhetoric“
  • “Russia poses no threat to the United Kingdom and its people“

LONDON: Russia’s embassy in London said on Tuesday that Moscow had no intention of attacking Britain, rejecting accusations by the British government of growing aggression and daily cyberattacks.

Britain said on Monday it would radically change its approach to defense to address new threats, including from Russia, after endorsing the findings of an independently-produced Strategic Defense Review.

After unveiling the defense overhaul on Monday, British Defense Secretary John Healey said Europe was facing war, growing Russian aggression, new nuclear risks and daily cyberattacks.

Russia’s embassy issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing what it described as “a fresh salvo of anti-Russian rhetoric.”


“Russia poses no threat to the United Kingdom and its people,” the statement said. “We harbor no aggressive intentions and have no plans to attack Britain. We are not interested in doing so, nor do we need to.”

Relations between Russia and Britain are at their lowest level since the Cold War. They deteriorated further after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Britain and other NATO members have provided large amounts of military aid and other support to Kyiv.

China’s embassy in London also criticized Britain’s defense review, saying in a statement on Tuesday that the document deliberately misrepresented Beijing’s defense policy to justify British military expansion.

The review had described China as “a sophisticated and persistent challenge,” citing its rapid military modernization, including an expanded nuclear arsenal, and saying Beijing was likely using espionage and cyberattacks, and stealing intellectual property.