[In Ukrainian towns near Russia’s border, Moscow’s influence
was strong and Ukrainian was rarely spoken. The war has changed that.]
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RUSSIAN SPEAKERS IN EASTERN UKRAINE SPEAK OUT  
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Shaun Walker
June 4, 2022
Guardian
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_ In Ukrainian towns near Russia’s border, Moscow’s influence was
strong and Ukrainian was rarely spoken. The war has changed that. _

The street artist Gamlet in a destroyed pub in Kharkiv: the slogan on
the wall reads ‘Time hears us’ in Ukrainian, Photograph: Alessio
Mamo/The Observer

 

Gamlet Zinkivskyi grew up speaking Russian in the city of Kharkiv,
just like his parents. But when Vladimir Putin launched the invasion
of Ukraine [[link removed]] on 24
February, it was the final push for him to switch fully to Ukrainian.

“Unfortunately, I grew up speaking Russian, but it’s not pleasant
to speak the same language as the army that is destroying whole areas
of our country,” said Zinkivskyi, a 35-year-old street artist widely
known to Kharkiv residents, who usually refer to him by his first
name.

The switch of language is part of a broader journey towards a more
pronounced Ukrainian identity for Zinkivskyi, something shared by many
in the largely Russian-speaking areas of east and south Ukraine. It is
a process which has become more pronounced in the past three months,
but it has been brewing for some years.

As a young artist, Zinkivskyi had a longstanding dream: an exhibition
in Moscow. Kharkiv
[[link removed]] is
just a few dozen miles from the border with Russia and has long been
almost entirely Russian-speaking. Culturally, Moscow felt like the
centre of the universe. But when Zinkivskyi finally made it to a
gallery there in 2012, he was horrified. “They were obnoxious and
patronising about Kharkiv and Ukraine, and frankly I thought: fuck
them,” he said. He returned to Kharkiv and became more focused on
the Ukrainian art scene.

After the annexation of Crimea, in 2014
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Zinkivskyi started trying to speak some Ukrainian with a few friends.
Now he has fully switched, and for the first time is also introducing
political and patriotic themes into his art.

The language issue is something that comes up again and again in
Kharkiv. Oleksandra Panchenko, a 22-year-old interior designer, said
that since 2014 she had been trying hard to improve her Ukrainian, but
conceded that she still often speaks Russian with friends.

However, she is adamant that by the time she has children, she will be
fluent enough to speak only Ukrainian at home. “I grew up in a
Russian-language family, my kids will grow up in a Ukrainian-language
family,” she said.

Back in 2014, there were separatist rumblings in Kharkiv, with some
people looking to the swift annexation of Crimea and wondering if all
of eastern Ukraine might not be better off inside Russia. But eight
years of observing the miserable conditions in the Russian proxy
states of Donetsk and Luhansk dampened those feelings, and Russia’s
invasion has almost entirely extinguished them.

Panchenko, who has painted her nails blue and yellow and describes
herself as a staunch patriot, made a guess at the political
allegiances of Kharkiv residents before the war, based on her broad
circle of acquaintances. About 10% of the city used to be what are
disparagingly known as _vatniki_ – aggressively pro-Russian –
she said. She described 30% as being like her, “Ukraine, Ukraine,
Ukraine”, and 50% were “neutral – they felt Ukrainian but not
that strongly”.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has pushed people in this neutral category
more firmly into the patriotic camp, creating a much broader and more
passionate pro-Ukrainian base than ever existed previously,
particularly in the east of the country.

“There were a lot of neutral people here, but as soon as it came to
the war, a lot of them decided to fight,” said Vsevolod Kozhemyako,
a businessman who runs an agricultural company and once featured on
the Forbes list of the 100 richest Ukrainians.

Kozhemyako was skiing in Europe
[[link removed]] when the war began,
and left his family to return to Ukraine and set up a volunteer
battalion. His unit has been based close to the frontline outside
Kharkiv, in settlements that have come under relentless Russian fire.

Three out of four of Kozhemyako’s grandparents were Russian, and
during the Soviet era his passport listed his nationality as Russian.
However, he said that ever since the Orange Revolution of 2004 
[[link removed]]he
had been a strong Ukrainian patriot and rejected the influence of
Russia in Ukraine.

“Russians and Ukrainians are absolutely different. I am
Russian-speaking, I think in Russian and I have three-quarter Russian
blood, but the part of Ukrainian blood in me made its mark,” he said
in an interview in Kharkiv city centre, where he now allows himself
the occasional day away from his unit.

Kozhemyako and Zinkivskyi are old acquaintances, and when the artist
told the businessman he wanted to sign up, Kozhemyako welcomed him to
the battalion, but told him he should fight with a paintbrush and not
a gun. Since then, Zinkivskyi has been busy painting slogans on
buildings damaged by Russian missiles. He also crossed out the street
signs on Pushkin Street and renamed it English Street, which he says
is recognition of British military support for Ukraine.

“Gamlet is very patriotic and his works are quite philosophical,”
said Kozhemyako. “They make people think in the direction of a new
Ukraine. This is very important, especially now.”

The geographical and cultural variations inside Ukraine were one of
the reasons why Putin and other Russian leaders tried to claim the
country was an artificial construct. Instead, they now find their
bloody invasion has done more than anything to bring the different
parts of Ukraine together under a common identity, in opposition to
Moscow.

The Russian invasion has simultaneously given those who might be
neutral in their allegiances a stark choice about what kind of country
they want to identify with, and provided a rallying point that allows
for a broad and inclusive idea of what it means to be a Ukrainian
patriot.

In the early days of the war, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr
Zelenskiy, passed a decree banning the activities of a number of
pro-Russian parties, and the country’s most notorious pro-Russian
politician, Viktor Medvedchuk, was arrested
[[link removed]].

Medvedchuk, whose daughter is Putin’s goddaughter, has long been
seen as Putin’s man in Kyiv. But even some of his close associates
have rebranded themselves as patriots in the wake of the invasion.

Yuriy Zagorodny, a member of parliament, had been at Medvedchuk’s
side since they both worked in the administration of former president
Leonid Kuchma in the early 2000s. However, he said, he made a decision
in the early days of the war that his relationship with Medvedchuk was
over. “Ukraine is my homeland, Russia is an aggressor and Putin is
the main criminal of the 21st century,” he said in an interview in
Kyiv, employing dramatically different rhetoric to what he had used
during a previous interview in mid-February.

Zagorodny said he had joined the territorial defence unit in his home
town, south of Kyiv, in the first days of the war. He had spent some
nights on a checkpoint and other days overseeing the construction of
trenches.

He said he had spent hours checking the documents of drivers of
passing cars; then when he had to travel to Kyiv for parliamentary
sittings, he was stopped at another checkpoint, where the men pulled
him out of the car and subjected him to verbal abuse when they saw he
was an MP from Medvedchuk’s party. He assured the men he was a firm
patriot. “I do have a feeling of guilt, but what we wanted was
peaceful coexistence between the countries. Of course, now, that’s
all over,” said Zagorodny.

“Changing shoes in mid-air” is the Ukrainian expression for this
kind of rapid transformation in views to fit in with the prevailing
climate, but for all that there may be cynical self-preservation at
work, there is also a sense that people have had to make a choice:
either come down on the side of a Ukraine that is fighting for the
right to exist, or on that of a Russia that launches missiles and
bombs on sleeping cities, and where freedom of expression is no longer
legal.

For many, it is an easy choice, and by launching the attack on Ukraine
in the way he did, Putin has deprived Russia of many of its natural
supporters in the country.

[A sign in Ukrainian on board a ferry used to transport Ukrainian
refugees, in Marseilles, France.]
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‘Ukrainian has become a symbol’: interest in language spikes amid
Russia invasion
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Read more
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“My 11-year old nephew talks about ‘Putler’ – a mix of Putin
and Hitler. He will spend his whole life hating Russia, and his
children will too. Maybe in several generations that will change, but
not sooner than that,” said Zagorodny.

In the port of Odesa, the mayor, Hennadiy Trukhanov, widely seen as
pro-Russian, released an angry video in the early days of the war in
response to the Kremlin’s claims that it was defending Russian
speakers in the country. “Who the fuck are you planning to defend
here?” he asked. In the central city of Kryvyi Rih, the mayor,
Oleksandr Vilkul, previously seen as pro-Russian, has also rebranded
himself as a patriot and taken up defence of the city.

As well as strengthening the sense of Ukrainian identity among
politicians and the general population in the south and east of the
country, the war has also helped increase respect for these areas in
the patriotic strongholds of western and central Ukraine, where some
doubted the loyalty of parts of the east, particularly after 2014.

Kozhemyako said any doubts about these regions should now be
considered settled: “A lot of people in western Ukraine saw how
Kharkiv fights,” he said.

_Shaun Walker [[link removed]] is
the Guardian's central and eastern Europe correspondent. Previously,
he spent more than a decade in Moscow and is the author of The Long
Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past._

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* Ukraine
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* Ukraine invasion
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* Russian invasion
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